


All She Wants Is

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Humor, Male-Female Friendship, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-05-06 22:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5433446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's bothering her. Not him, exactly. For once, he's not actively bothering her. But something about him."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bothersome—1 x 04 (Hell Hath No Fury)

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: A one-shot (?) Post-ep for Hell Hath No Fury (1 x 04) at this point. See end notes for more.

 

 

He's bothering her.

Not him, exactly. For once, he's not _actively_ bothering her. But something about him. Something about this case and the way he called the escort service without the slightest hesitation. Without so much as a second thought before swanning off for the night.

And worse than all that, she knows he's right. He _will_ find the girl in the photo first. _Tiffany_. He'll find her, and it's an opportunity. A low-profile, lawyer-free meet that just might break the case. That _should_ bother her. She doesn't want to feed his over-inflated sense of importance, and she sure as hell doesn't want to owe him anything. She doesn't want his fancy coffee machine or his poker buddy judges. She doesn't want him any more entangled in her life than he already is.

But that's not what's bothering her. None of it is, and it's Lanie who brings it all to light.

She's dangling her feet, perched on the edge of an autopsy table as her friend shrugs out of her white lab coat. Lanie doesn't bother to hide her head shake when she spies the button-up ruffle of Kate's deep purple blouse.

_Don't be mean,_ Kate says, and on the surface, it's about something else entirely. It's their usual back-and-forth over her social life, or lack thereof. Over the fact that she's not just literally buttoned up, even on the verge of a girls night out.

But Lanie sees through it. Half-joking annoyance on the surface. She sees right through it and cuts to the heart of the matter.

_You deserve it. Getting a drink with me after work instead of getting your freak on with writer-boy?_

And that's all it takes. How what's really been bothering her works its way to the surface. What's bothering her right this second. It drifts up and tugs her stomach along with it. _Oh-shit_ butterflies, because it's a _problem._

Lanie sees it. Panic on her face or something else. Something worse than panic maybe, and she homes in. She's about to, anyway, when Kate's phone rings, and she's never been so grateful to see it's _him_ calling. Never been so grateful to have him actively bothering her.

_Guess who's got a date with a prostitute?_

She throws her hands up, because he's that bad and worse. He's _impossible._ An infuriating, leering man–child. And none of that has a thing to do with what's bothering her.

* * *

 

She's not lying.

_Detective Beckett, to what do I owe this very unexpected pleasure?_

She squares off against him. Shoulders back and chin up. Absolutely still, because she's _not_ shivering at the way he manages to drag that last word all up and down her body. _Pleasure_. Head to toe and back again.

_I just figured if you're going to bother me at my work I should bother you at yours._

She's not shivering. It's not a lie, and still, she's racing away from it. Talking fast. Giving him grief. Steering sharply clear of anything personal. Any slack-jawed, _hungry_ reaction at all to her showing up like this. Bare legs and some afterthought of a dress that's four or five seasons out of date. Not that he seems to mind. Not that he seems to notice anything but the sheer amount of skin on display. The glint of jewelry at her wrist and earrings whispering over her shoulders.

She's running even though it's what she wanted, isn't it? Even though _this_ is what's been bothering her. Perversely. Exactly what's been bothering her: The fact that he hasn't looked at her like this _once_ since the Tisdale case.

It's nonsense. Sheer stupidity that he might _actually_ be doing research. He might _actually_ be interested in her job and the fact that she's good at it. He might actually not be trying to get into her pants.

It's ridiculous, and she doesn't even know what she's saying any more. Why she's going after the stupid end to the stupid series like this when she can see it's really hitting him. She can see the flash of hurt before his eyes go hard and they're playing the game again. Skimming the surface.

She doesn't know what she's saying, and misery is setting in. His family approaches, but there's no salvation there. Not even the name. _Nikki Heat._ His mother realizes she's stirred the pot, and for once it's unintentional. She tugs Alexis away and leaves the two of them sparring.

She advances. He retreats. He hides behind the stupid cut-out of himself, and it's all just a bit too literal. Everything boils up to the surface and it's only by the grace of God and so many years on the job that isolating a person of interest is muscle memory by now.

"You haven't asked!" She blurts it, stabbing him in the center of the chest with one finger.

Her nail polish is chipped already. It's depressing. Something else all too literal: A reminder of what kind of woman she is and what kind of woman she isn't. She yanks her hand back, trying to hide it. Trying to hide, in general, but he's switched off, too. They're not playing any more.

"Asked what?" There's a stubborn jut to his chin. An annoyed tone that clips off the ends of his words.

"Asked me out." She can't believe the words make it out. She's shivering now. Quaking in her stilettos, though she's pretty sure he can't tell. Pretty sure that's an inside thing. "Don't you . . ." She clears her throat. Shakes out her hair and the brush of her earrings gives her an odd kind of confidence. Boldness. "Don't you want to know _how_ slutty your detective . . ."

". . . Nikki," he interjects, squaring his own shoulders. Standing his ground, and even so, she wonders if he's as stark white with terror as she is.

She wonders, but it's too much. It's too stupid. All of it. Coming here. Letting it bother her. She turns from him. Sharply away on one ill-advised stiletto, but she doesn't make it far.

"I did ask." There's still that stubborn set to his chin. He's indignant, but his voice is soft enough that no one but her would hear even if she _hadn't_ managed to back him all the way to some far corner of the bookstore. "You turned me down."

There's humor enough in it that it swings her back around. Self-deprecation and a shy, nervous light in his eyes that's more devastating than his full-on assault could ever be.

"Yeah. That's when I thought I was rid of you."

She's shocked to hear herself saying anything at all. Shocked at the note of timid fondness that creeps into her voice. More than shocked when he takes a step toward her.

"But you're not rid of me." He's turning the words over in his mouth. In the air between them like it's new information. Like he didn't know that she's stuck with him and it's not just literal. She's not rid of him and he definitely didn't know that before this very moment. "Would your answer be different now?"

"Answer." It's a dumbstruck echo.

"Answer," he says again, smiling at her. Teasing a little. "If I asked you to have a drink with me." He shakes his head. More to himself than to her, as if he knows that's a bridge too far. He knows it's not the right question. "If I asked to see you to your door tonight . . ."

He lets it hang there. He's not touching her—not even looking her up and down—but he might as well be, and the friction of it is dangerous. The calculated innocence of words he's chosen so precisely.

_If I asked to see you to your door tonight . . ._

The way it slides past the fact that he's very _pointedly_ not looking at her. It hangs there between them. What he's asked and what he hasn't, and it's satisfying and a _problem_ and the _oh shit_ butterflies are having a field day. It hangs there between them.

"Not a chance," she says finally, but she's grinning at him.

He's grinning, too, pleased and strangely innocent. It makes her think of her back against a cold brick wall. Fumbling kisses from her first boyfriend and not wanting to tear herself away even with the light from her family's apartment flicking on high above. Even with her dad's footsteps on the stairs. It makes her feel like she hasn't in a long, _long_ time.

But she does tear herself away. She turns on a heel and makes it a dozen steps away this time.

"What if I changed the name?" He calls out.

"Would you?" Her head swivels back around, though she's not sure she wanted it to. She's not sure she wanted to ask.

He thinks about it. Gives her a searching look that has nothing to do with bare skin and fuck-me heels. Not much to do with it, anyway.

"No," he says, and it's more thoughtful than stubborn. More careful than anything and she turns away for the third tim, butterflies rising as she feels his gaze on her all the way to the door. All the way out into the chill spring air and far beyond.

 

 

 


	2. Irrepressible—Christmas 2009

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It starts slowly. One hideous little elf clinging to the fencing around the bullpen right next to her desk. She goes to yank it down. That's her immediate instinct, but something stays her hand. Something vague about ignoring it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Set Christmas 2009

 

It starts slowly. One hideous little elf clinging to the fencing around the bullpen right next to her desk. She goes to yank it down. That's her immediate instinct, but something stays her hand. Something vague about ignoring it. How that's surer to get under his skin than pitching the stupid, _ugly_ little thing in the trash, but it's not quite true. The bright color catches her eye now and then. She feels a tug deep down, and she knows it's not quite true.

He has a friend by lunch time. Another hideous little elf, green to his red, waving up at him. She ignores the two of them and the little army that accumulates over the course of the day. More elves, but snowmen and reindeer, too. Creepy silver bells with googly eyes and bendable arms reaching out.

She ignores _him._ His sly looks and the rope-handle shopping bag he hasn't quite hidden behind her trash can. She ignores the surprisingly delicate porcelain angel suspended above the cappuccino machine, keeping watch.

She ignores all of it. String lights around the vending machine the next day, and the day after that, actual garlands of evergreen studded with crimson velvet bows. Enough to cover the whole perimeter of the fourth floor, blind hallways and all. She keeps on ignoring it. Not saying a word about the little and not-so-little things that appear every day.

He doesn't say a word, either. The sly looks disappear. The furtiveness turns . . . careful, and when she catches him looking at her, that's careful, too. Watchful, and she doesn't understand. There's no challenge in it. No triumph or pride, and it's not even stubborn. It's not like he's gritting his teeth to see it through. However it started for him—whatever it was—it becomes something different in their mutual silence.

She knows what it isn't and wonders what it _is._ She wonders a lot of things, but she doesn't say a word, and neither does he.

* * *

 

It builds. Every day a little more until they're closing in on Christmas and the place is wall-to-wall with it. Sights and scents and sounds, every single one courtesy of him, though there must be accomplices. There must be a dozen people or more in on it, and she has no idea when they find the time, given the hours she's putting in. The hours she's always put in this time of year.

She wants to be annoyed with him. She wants to be all sharp angles and constant digs. She wants to keep him, of all people, at a distance right now. Especially now, because this is her ritual. It's how she copes with days contracting and expanding again, day by day, minute by minute.

She draws into herself and the few people scattered around her know better than to try to do anything about it. Now they do, anyway, but not him. He doesn't get it. Or he _does_ get it and he doesn't care.

Or he does care.

It's a possibility she can't deal with. A possibility, and she has no idea what it even means for him to care. She has no idea at all, and it's too much this time of year.

It's all too much, and she wants to be annoyed with him, but she ignores it instead. She just ignores everything.

* * *

 

It's the twenty-third when he catches her out. Sweets are the latest assault. They've been around for days. Heaping platters of every kind of dessert imaginable. Rum balls and chocolate-dipped pretzels. Fat peanut-butter patties with chocolate kisses nestled in the deep center thumbprint. Cherry-topped mini-cheesecakes and sticky-sweet walnut cups.

She snatches up a sugar cookie in a moment of weakness. A tree frosted green and she sees his hand in it. Red diagonals of crystallized sugar carefully tapped across its width while it was all still just a little warm from the oven. She pictures him and Alexis in awful holiday aprons, the two of them laughing and dusted with flour. Martha perched on a stool with her glass of wine, directing the whole thing.

She pictures it in vivid detail and the tableau gets her there for some reason. To annoyance. Aggravation. It gets her where she's wanted to be for the last three damned weeks. She breaks the tree in half and shoves one piece in her mouth.

It's heaven.

Buttery and sweet and she practically feels the rush of sugar hitting her blood stream. She closes her eyes, savoring, and it's a mistake. She's swamped by memory. Her mom's hands over hers much smaller ones wrapped around the rolling pin. Ten fingertips and another ten all stained with green and red and silver and gold.

It's agony.

She drops the other half of the cookie. It shatters at her feet. A starburst pattern of green and red and golden brown that's awful. Upsetting all out of proportion.

She stoops to retrieve it. Panics when her vision blurs and there's something scalding the back of her hand. A fat, heavy salt drop and another. She puts her palms flat to the scuffed tile and tries to breathe and all of a sudden he's there when she least wants to see him. When she least wants to see _anyone,_ he's crouched at her side, sweeping the scattered remains of half a sugar cookie into his palm.

She rocks back on to her heels. She wants to run. To turn away at least, before he sees her crying in the break room over a fucking cookie. Before she blurts out that the cappuccino angel looks nothing like her mom, but she thinks about her every time she sees it there, turning slowly. Before she's sobbing on his shoulder and he's letting her, because that's a possibility. Another possibility she has no idea what to do with.

She wants to run, but her limbs feel heavy and weak and there's no point. He's staring at her. Crouched and awkward with one hand full of cookie detritus, he's watching her, wondering what to do. Like she would know. Like she has any idea what to do with this.

It draws her eyes up, eventually. His stillness. His strange, _maddening_ patience in moments like this.

"That bad?" he asks quietly. Solemnly, though there's a smile lancing through the words as he nods down at the remains cupped in his palm.

"No," she says, her voice thick. "Good. Really good."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish you all a good end to this year and a bright beginning to the next.


	3. Inimitable—2 x 17 (Tick, Tick, Tick . . . )

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He's not supposed to be at the precinct. It's too early, for one thing. But there's also the fact that she hasn't called, and they're not in the middle of anything. There's no reason at all for him to be there, and she's not a big fan of the lift it gives her to see him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insert for Tick, Tick, Tick . . . (2 x 17)

 

 

He's not supposed to be at the precinct. It's too early, for one thing. But there's also the fact that she hasn't called, and they're not in the middle of anything. There's no reason at all for him to be there, and she's not a big fan of the lift it gives her to see him. Not a fan of the realization that he's vibrating with excitement and his mouth is already going a mile a minute and it's definitely way too early. And, still, there's that little lift.

_Ask me why I'm here._

She pushes back a little too hard.

_I ask myself that question every day_

_Guessing would imply caring_

A lot too hard. She can't quite suppress a wince, but he's too amped to notice. She's too abashedly grateful that he _hasn't_ noticed to brace for what comes next. The bomb he drops.

_Your book is being made into a movie?_

_And you are about to be immortalized on the silver screen._

And that takes care of the lift. It well and truly takes care of it.

* * *

 

It's a dumb thing. James McAvoy and Javier Bardem and whoever he thinks should play him. She doesn't ask. She very _pointedly_ doesn't ask, and it's strange that he doesn't offer. That he doesn't have a short list at the ready. Most likely it's himself he envisions opposite the leading lady of his dreams.

He's welcome to her. Angelina or Kate whoever. That's what she tells herself, but the idea nags. It tugs her down and leaves her with the heavy feeling inside. A knot behind her sternum, and it shouldn't. It's just a stupid game, and none of it should be getting to her like this.

It's a coping mechanism, right? Lanie's instantaneous _Halle Berry_ and smiles all around. The way he tries to drag her into the spirit of things and totally misses the fact that she's absolutely not into it. The fact that it _bothers_ her.

She's grateful for it in a way. That fact that he misses it entirely, because it's harmless. Annoying at best, and there's no reason at all it should eat at her like this. It's the kind of thing they all do every day of the week to take the edge off the job, and if it's a little bit of overkill—if there's a little too much backslapping and eager back and forth—it's this damned case, right?

Phone calls and junior jumble bullets. The creep factor just keeps climbing, and it's not just her feeling the pressure. It's not just her wondering how long this might play out or how bad it might get. Of course they'd need to blow off steam, all of them.

It's just a silly game, but she's really not in the mood.

* * *

 

Something changes at the carousel. With the machinery squealing to a halt and the calliope sagging out a final, eerie note, she watches something come over him. He turns serious, and after almost a year, that still surprises her every time.

It's a one-two punch when she actually asks if he's ok. Almost asks, and the look on his face when he answers gives the knot that's been growing steadily inside her yet another vicious tug.

_. . . if it weren't for the Nikki Heat of it._

_I'm feeling a little bit responsible._

It's beyond surprising. It's jarring, that unguarded moment and all it reveals. How it's not just _this. here. now._ that troubles him, but an uneasy trail of breadcrumbs from Dick Coonan to this moment. From before that, really, because he's never been quite what he seems, and she hasn't been what she was for a while now, and damned if that doesn't have something to do with it. Why the game bothers her. Why his over-the-top casting is anything but flattering.

It's an inconvenient epiphany. It's not the time or place for this kind of thing, and she's gruff with him. Honest, but she doesn't much like herself for it.

_If I hadn't created Nikki Heat . . ._

_He would still be killing. He'd just find another reason why._

He accepts it. A mechanical nod to show that part of him knows it's true.

She wants more than that, suddenly. However much this is the wrong time and place, she wants him to know that he has to chase thoughts like that away. That she's been there, and the job and the world and the way they walk in it are all hard enough without taking even more of the weight.

She wants more, but the world doesn't work like that. It moves on while she's struggling to keep her feet in this moment, it erupts into brusque, busy chaos emanating from a single point.

_Nikki Heat, I presume_

The woman radiates competence. She gestures, keeping up the smalltalk effortlessly as she coordinates her team.

_Cosmo._

_Celebrity writer tagalong._

Kate knows it's not smalltalk at all. That the carefully chosen words and the casual self-introduction are a master class in taking someone's measure and she might admire the tactic under other circumstances.

But these aren't other circumstances. It's _her_ measure Special Agent Jordan Shaw is taking, and he's too riveted to see it. Too pre-occupied with stumbling over the name—reciting chapter and verse on her accomplishments—to notice that Detective Kate Beckett has clearly come up wanting.

* * *

 

She won't let it be a low point. That dismissal in the parking garage and another one-two punch

_I got way more people than you do_

_. . . you're no good to me_

She ignores it. The edited version on endless replay. She drowns it out with her own recitation of the facts. The who and how and where of the story so far. She scours the file. Turns each sheet in the meager handful over and over. She comes to the end and goes back to the beginning.

She drives herself so relentlessly that she misses the creak of the stairwell door. So relentlessly that she only catches it in replay, along with the footsteps. Determined, then cautious, and she'd kick herself if she hadn't already lost precious seconds to an idiotic crisis of confidence.

But there's no time for that. No time for anything but slipping the gun soundlessly into her hand and throwing the door open wide and very nearly shooting him in the face.

He's not nearly as fazed as he should be. Not nearly as thrown by everything up to and including a near-death experience in her hallway as she'd like him to be, if for no other reason than she could use the company.

He seems to know it. It seems to be why he's there—company—but the fact of him there knocks her off her game more than anything. Further off her game, and when his mouth opens and the words _Agent Shaw_ fall out, she can practically hear the sizzle of her own short fuse.

He calls her jealous. He's not really serious. It's more banter than anything, but his eyes go suddenly wide when he sees that he's hit his mark. She deflects. Hits back harder than she should, making that the theme of the last couple of days, but this time she's bracing at least.

She expects him to wind her up. To taunt her with it, but he leans back. Calls her ridiculous, but it's almost absent. Almost an afterthought as he turns suddenly agreeable. Like Agent Shaw isn't the least bit interesting to him in light of this new information.

It's one plot twist too many for her. She's not lying when she says she's tired, and it shakes her again when he won't go. When they're back in the troubled moment by the carousel, and _he's_ the ridiculous one.

_I'm here to protect you._

_There is a madman gunning for you because of me. I am not going to leave you alone._

Completely ridiculous, but fearless and loyal, too. There's a tug inside, but it loosens something this time. It's a kind of relief, and she's too tired to examine it—why on earth she's letting him stay when it's ridiculous. She accepts it instead. The fact that It's a low point, and whether she likes it or not, she could use the company.

* * *

 

She can't sleep. It's a surprise, and it's not. She's governed by habit—as much as the job allows it, anyway—and it serves her well. Usually serves her well, but here she is, flopping on to her belly all over again and the hands on the bedside clock have hardly moved.

She tells herself it's the case, and it's not a lie exactly. Details cycle through her mind. The bodies. The scenes. The war room and Jordan Shaw and all her cool toys. The theater of it all drives her to the black edge of sleep, but when she balances there, falling and not falling, it's not the case anymore. It's everything else. The hollow look behind his eyes. Her own gnawing sense that she's at the fringes of her own life.

She mashes her face into the pillow and counts backward, just off-kilter with the tick of the clock. It's a last-ditch maneuver, but it works sometimes. Filling her mind with a different kind of noise, but ultimately, it's the quiet that's getting to her tonight. The impossible combination of him and absolute silence that's been getting to her for the last thirty-seven minutes. Thirty-nine. Forty-three. Fifty-six.

She hears it then. The groan of the floorboard she's always meaning to fix, but it dies away. The absence of sound that follows is so complete—it stretches out so long—that she thinks she must have imagined it. Her mind thinks that, but her body has other ideas. Her instincts bring her feet soundlessly to the floor. They have her moving across it, and in her hand, the gun she doesn't remember scooping off the nightstand.

For the second time in as many hours, her instincts have her throwing up a door and very nearly shooting him in the face.

"Castle!" She swings out, making a hallway check out of habit, but her arms are already dropping to her sides. The adrenaline rush is already gone. "What the hell?"

"Bathroom?" It's a feeble excuse. One he doesn't believe any more than he expects her to, but he's all in for some reason. Talking fast the way he does when he's running. When something cuts deeper than he'd like and he feels caught out. "I drank my wine _and_ your wine and . . ."

"Castle." She's sliding down the wall as she cuts him off. She half wonders what she's doing. What this _is._ Her spine stiffens as the cold of the floorboards seeps through the thin fabric of her leggings and she wonders. "You were _not_ taking your life in your hands looking for the bathroom."

"Not exactly taking my life in my hands. Your trigger discipline is excellent." It's too chipper. To bright and entirely at odds with the weight that carries him to the floor, his back slouched against the wall opposite her.

She shakes her head. Doesn't even say his name this time, but it's enough to shame him. To draw a murmured apology for waking her, though neither of them moves to go. It's strange and awkward and cold. It's ridiculous, but neither one of them moves

"Why?"

There's no retort. No _Why what?_ though she has no more idea than he does what she's really asking. She drops her head back against the wall. Rolls her neck to look at him, but he's fixated on his own knees. On the tangle of his fingers, twisting atop them, never quite coming to rest.

"You're upset," he says, finally. He rushes in to clarify, though there's no retort from her either. "Not just this." He gestures to the gun resting on the floor within easy reach. To the front door and the city outside. Everything that feels far away from here. "Upset with me."

"I'm always upset with you." She shoots him a miserable grin. Something to show willing, though the knot inside feels huge and hard and indestructible.

"You're always _annoyed_ with me." He nudges her toes with his own. "Totally different."

"Totally," she repeats.

She smiles down at the floor. She feels him watching her, the weight of things not said tugging at this fragile strand of connection. Snapping it in the end. He stirs himself. Draws the breath that will take him to his feet. Back to the couch or out the front door, maybe. It's ridiculous that he's here, after all.

"It's late." He extends a hand down toward her. Both hands, as though he's just noticed they're both exhausted. He jerks his head toward the darkness beyond the half open bedroom door. "You should rest at least."

He twitches his fingers and she gives in. Takes both his hands, and they're both surprised enough to spring apart as soon as she's on her feet. They're both standing at five paces, hands behind their backs like self-conscious kids at a junior high dance.

She stoops for the gun. A stupid bid to hide the blush he can't possibly see in the dim hallway light anyway. He takes it as his cue to go. Hits the creaking floorboard along the way and she sees the immediate future playing out. Staring up at the ceiling with this knot in her chest. She makes a decision. 

"I don't want . . ."

It starts out strong. Forceful enough to stop him. To pull him back around to face her. But it ends in silence, total, awkward, and strange. He waits, patient and serious enough that she feels foolish. Worse than foolish, but she blurts it out anyway.

"I don't want anyone playing me."

He frowns. He looks . . . not surprised, exactly. Not troubled, exactly, either. Not like at the carousel or even a few minutes ago. Regretful, maybe, and like he's wondering if she means as much by it as she thinks he suspects.

A look passes between them. An apology mutually accepted for something or other, and his face brightens suddenly.

"You could sue me," he says.

He sounds way too excited at the prospect, and tired as she is, she gives a half-hearted laugh. "Would that even work?"

"No." He deflates a little. Worries the creaky floorboard with his toe. "Might be fun, though?"

"Might be," she says. There's a tug inside and the knot loosens a little more. "Probably should catch this guy first, though."

"Probably," he agrees. He turns again like he's about to go. Back to the couch our out the front door. He stops, though, his back still to her. Hangs on to the corner of the wall. "Whoever they get, though—doesn't matter who—they won't pull it off."

"No?" She hates how small her voice sounds. The needy thread running through it.

"Not a chance." His voice is level. Serious and sincere. He looks at her over his shoulder, his gaze open and untroubled and she _really_ hopes he can't see her blush in the dim hallway light. "Only one Kate Beckett."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is meh, but Brain Poneh kept on keeping on. Thanks for reading.


	4. Illegible—2 x 03 (Inventing the Girl)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Damage control. That how she'd spun it to herself, as she'd stood there on the curb. She'd figured it'd be wise to know the worst of it straight off, but it's been most of a day now, and she doesn't know. She hasn't read it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during Inventing the Girl (2 x 03)

 

 

She hadn't meant to leave it on her desk. Truthfully, she hadn't even meant to _have_ it. In the weeks he's been back, she's been on a cruise up the river they call denial, kind of hoping she'd be able to just ignore the whole damned thing.

But the penny had dropped courtesy of Rina—whoever the hell _she_ might be when she's at home—and too many things had suddenly made sense: Everyday New Yorkers, famous for their indifference, rubber necking to make eye contact with her out on the street. The onslaught of incoming calls from numbers she recognizes only vaguely. Two _call me_ voice mails from her dad in the same day. The little red number ticking up and up on the inbox for her non-work email.

The article. That _stupid_ article.

She'd picked up a copy of the magazine at a newsstand in a rare five-minute interval without him dogging her heels. Scowled hard enough at him smirking up at her and the cover declaring him _Cosmo's_ "Hottest Bachelor Ever!" that the poor kid covering the counter before the lunch rush had practically thrown the change at her before scurrying off to help someone less terrifying.

_Damage control._

That how she'd spun it to herself, as she'd stood there on the curb. She'd figured it'd be wise to know the worst of it straight off, but it's been most of a day now, and she _doesn't_ know. She hasn't read it. Absolutely cannot bring herself to even skim when she flips to the lede and finds him in that stupid suit, smiling wide with a pouting, bare-midriffed "cop" hanging off either shoulder.

She'd forgotten about it. Pushed it so far out of her mind that she'd just _left_ it there, and of course now he sees it from halfway across the precinct. Derails her train of thought about the actual case in the rush to have his hands all over it.

_Oh! You couldn't resist, could you? Pretty nice write-up, huh?_

He's grinning like a kid, so entirely, _innocently_ pleased you'd think he'd just come home to find she'd hung his second-grade artwork in a place of honor on the fridge.

She opens her mouth to cut him down. To lash out and say she hasn't read it and wouldn't bother if the stupid thing weren't the latest in a long line of ways he's ruining her life. She's on the verge of some devastating comeback, but he really is like a kid, eager and hopeful and maybe the tiniest bit less sure of himself than he'd like to let on. She doesn't have the heart. She pulls the punch and bluffs.

_Yeah. If you like those sorts of fluff pieces._

It's not much of a gamble. _Fluff_. It's bound to be accurate, but his face falls anyway, and the whole thing is so stupid. Her fingers twitch. She moves to snatch the magazine from him. To shove it somewhere out of sight, like she should've done in the first place, but he holds on tight.

He flips to the picture of her, and she'd like to crawl into some conveniently deep, dark hole, because she'd somehow managed to forget about that part. He makes some comment she hardly hears. Sherlock Holmes and someone or other, but she can hardly hear over the blood pounding suddenly in her ears as she remembers how painful that day was. Having him there at all, and on top of that misery, the photo shoot itself. Being transported back to the summer before senior year.

The way it had been overwhelming all over again. The dissonance between the suddenly, undeniably attractive body in the mirror and the painfully awkward version that lingered in her own head. The then-and-now army of fierce, flamboyant men and women with brushes and sponge wedges and lenses tugging at her, murmuring in her ear and getting in her face.

She jerks herself out of the moment. Ancient memory and recent rage. A toxic mix she tries to claw her way up and out of, but it's too late. They're fighting in pointlessly hushed whispers.

_But if you were upset, you would tell me, right?_

He digs in, insisting. She digs in, evading.

_It doesn't matter, because I'm not upset._

* * *

 

They're both bluffing after that. Carrying on as if they're ok, but neither of them is. Not really, and it all gets tangled up. His issues and hers, then-and-now issues circling around one another to create a fucked up kind of synergy.

She's blasé in the box with Will James. The man's particular brand of sleaze stirs up too many memories of ducking hands and dodging unwelcome overtures. It rattles her, and just when she has to dial back her own fury, Castle comes out swinging.

_"You were wearing a lot of makeup today. It made you look like a slut."_

James laughs. There's an infinite moment before the tap on the glass when she thinks Castle might go right over the table at him. When she can practically hear the impact of his fist slamming into the photographer's face, and she knows she'll sit back and watch. She knows that some back-then part of her will find satisfaction in it.

But the tap on the glass _does_ come. He drops hard back into himself. Looks to her immediately, like he's embarrassed. Like he's ashamed or thinks he should be, at least.

He disappears for a few minutes between their stalker's alibi checking out and the time they have the husband in again. He walks it off or does whatever he does, and by the time he steps back into the box, has poker face on.

He's subdued with Travis. Almost gentle, where usually he'd be the one picking at the loose threads. At everything this guy doesn't seem to have known about his own wife.

It's productive. That's a surprise to them both if the gaze he flicks her way is anything to go by, but it gets them another name—Wyatt Monroe. She's not crazy about the role reversal, though. She doesn't like knowing it's his poker face without knowing _why_ it's necessary _._ Why _this_ case and _these_ bottom-feeders when this is workaday stuff for the two of them.

_If you were upset, you would tell me, right?_

She wants to push the question right back at him, but she's too busy bluffing herself.

* * *

 

It's funny. The big reveal when it comes is _funny_.

_That's "Mr. Castle" to you, missy._

It's hilarious, and he's seven different kinds of hypocrite, but it gets to her a little, too. The fact that he doesn't hesitate at all, though he has to know how much shit it's going to bring him. He marches them both right over to Rina, and the seamless slip into teenage girl speak reminds her he's a father stumbling his way through the teen years more or less alone with nothing like normal—then or now—in his own life to go on.

It gets to her, but there's the job to do. They go on doing this new, peculiar dance as things get uglier and uglier. She lashes out at Teddy Farrow in the middle of the bullpen. He roams Wyatt Monroe's apartment as brazenly as any crime scene in the early days and comes up with Jenna's pink pumps. She has his back and he has hers, though each has their own reasons for not looking the other in the eye when Sierra Goodwin cuts to the chase.

_I figured she was gonna give Wyatt what he wanted. I just told her, "It's not the worst thing in the world, you know. You might even like it." . . . I did._

It's nothing new. A story without innocents, save Jenna herself, in the end, but it takes this strange configuration of the two of them to bring even that much truth to light. It takes him slipping the chain with the husband. It takes her sitting back and watching. It takes the two of them to sell the bluff, though he gives her the credit.

The fact is, it takes these precise versions of the two of them. It's anything but comforting.

* * *

 

They're both more than a little bruised by everything. By the fact that there's a new Jenna McBoyd stepping off a bus even now, and they're more open than either of them would usually be about loose ends and the injustice of it all.

A little too open, maybe. They end up fighting again. About the stupid article. About Nikki Heat and the book she hasn't even seen yet. About him and her. The two of them and fact and fiction.

_Why didn't you ask?_

_Why didn't it occur to you?_

_You'll have it by tomorrow._

They end up _kind of_ fighting, though for her part, it feels like light and air coming in. A little more room for them to be however they are with each other. A little more room for possibility, whether she likes it or not.

_Good._

_Good._

He gets the last word in. She lets him have it, though she's sorrier than she'd ever admit that he's going. That it's not one of those nights when he's inclined to turn back at the elevator and toss out a casual invitation for a burger or a drink.

She thinks about calling after him. Drawing out the role reversal a little while longer, but her palm lands on the glossy surface of the magazine still lying neglected at the corner of her desk.

* * *

 

She has second thoughts about diving into it. The article. The version of them that's already on newsstands. Diving back into the world she'd long ago decided was not for her. But that's her intention. The task she's set herself as she turns the locks on her apartment door and slides the security chain home.

She sits down with it, cross-legged on the most comfortable part of her couch with a glass of wine and the bottle within easy reach. She flips to the first page and braces herself. Shuts out the images and makes her eye move over the erratically placed blocks of text.

She hates the format, and not just here. She _hates_ the cutesy, present-tense intro that has far more to do with the writer than the subject and the way it's interspersed with faux-exact quotes. She skips around at first. It's the best she can do when she remembers the stupid retro mic in her face.

But it _is_ nice. Even she can't help seeing that in her grudging, piecemeal first approach. It's nice, and that's definitely down to him. There's not a single quote from her, and she's glad of it. But it goes beyond that. Far beyond in the obvious intent to focus on him. She's hardly even an afterthought to Amy, and she has to laugh at the impression she apparently didn't make on the perky young writer.

But even so, she's there. He's front and center, of course. In his own words, as well as Amy's, because he wouldn't be _him_ otherwise. But she's there, woven in to virtually every reply. She's tucked between the lines and out in the open, and it's nice, but it hurts all over again. The pain of him suddenly back in her life and the rightness of it, too. Both truths layered together.

She's _everywhere,_ from the first sentence of the cutesy introduction to the pithy quote that ends the piece, and she really _does_ sound like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and whomever, but that's _his_ version of her. All his, and she warms to it with more than the neglected glass of wine at her elbow.

She decides that she ought to do it properly. For damage control and more. For all the iterations of the two of them that fit together and fight out in the open. That hurt and forgive and bring the truth to light. She goes back to the beginning to do it properly.

* * *

 

  * **AS:** Heat Wave _kicks off with your alter ego Jameson Rook already well under Nikki Heat's skin. Why not start with the sensational true story? Wasn't your first case a copycat?_
  * **RC:** _A copycat! Yes. Someone—definitely not me, of course—who staged his murders like scenes from some of my earlier books._ [ **RC** laughs and gives me roguish wink before turning thoughtful. ] _It is . . . Meeting Detective Beckett was a sensational introduction to Nikki and her world. I tried that opening for_ Heat Wave _, but the problem was . . . is . . ._ [He pauses again, taking in streams of New Yorkers rushing by, coffee in hand, yoga mats on their back. He picks up the thread of conversation with new resolve.] _It's hard now—almost impossible—to remember what it was like_ not _knowing her. That's what I wanted to capture by starting with her and Rook_ in medias res: _Two people who each know a lot about the other instantly. I mean right from the start!_
  * **AS:** _And Nikki doesn't like knowing she's been made . . ._
  * **RC:** [laughs] _Oh, it pisses them both off. And scares the hell out of them. And they both know they've barely scratched the surface . . ._



 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks very much for reading and for your continuing support.


	5. Incongruous—1 x 07 (Home is Where the Heart Stops)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Lanie is delighted—comprehensively delighted—by the whole thing. The gesture itself, and the way it makes Kate squirm. The fact that her best friend won't be showing up in the Ledger's 'Crimes of Fashion' section come morning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insert/Tag for Home Is Where the Heart Stops (1 x 07)

 

The outrage is for show, mostly. Who her audience is supposed to be is another question entirely.

Lanie is delighted— _comprehensively_ delighted—by the whole thing. The gesture itself, and the way it makes Kate squirm. The fact that her best friend won't be showing up in the _Ledger's_ "Crimes of Fashion" section come morning. The hours of enjoyment that she'll get—that Ryan and Esposito and the whole damned precinct will get—out of never, ever letting Beckett forget about the time she played Cinderella to Richard Castle's fairy godmother.

_Bibbity-bobbity-boo_

She's alone in it. Outrage for an audience of one. She sinks both hands into the sea of tissue paper and reminds herself that she's pissed at him. For backing her into this. For that fucking smirk.

_Oh, it's a black tie event. That's not a problem, is it?_

She's pissed and she doesn't want to do this and she hates him for knowing damned well that black tie up is a problem. She hates him for the gall of it. For presuming to try to dress her. She hates him right up until she lifts the dress free of the box. Right up until the light plays over the color and the silky fabric whispers over her skin.

Then the outrage is just for show, and she's playing to an empty house.

* * *

 

She regrets sending him off for drinks almost as soon as he's gone.

_Vodka. Lots of vodka. But I'm on duty. So water._

She definitely regrets that last part—her commitment to the job—when "Ruthie" and her sparkly, one-size-too-small halter dress sidle up for a little shop talk. She's annoyed by the distraction, first and foremost. Aware of how out of her element she is when she stumbles over introductions.

_Um, Beck... I'm Kate. Nice to meet you._

The last part is a lie. Nothing about this is nice. The job gives her glimpses of pretty much every slice of life in Manhattan, but this . . . she really had no idea and trying to go this alone—sending him off for drinks—was a spectacularly bad plan.

She can hardly see Castle for the couple pressing in around him. _Rachel,_ her brain supplies belatedly. _The something of donor something._ She shakes herself. Tries to remember that she's working. That _Castle_ is working, or thinks he is anyway, and that's why he needs watching. That's why it's unsettling to have him out of sight.

_Do you work for the charity?_

She tosses the question over her shoulder, her eyes still glued to the bar at the far end of the room. It's half work, half desperation. Ruthie doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and she doesn't want to look desperate. She doesn't want to _feel_ desperate, but the whole vibe of this place makes her skin crawl. Ruthie's answer as she tips back her white wine and scans the crowd for a viable target doesn't help matters.

_No, but I'm on the circuit . . . you know what the best one is? uh, that project . . . what do you call it? The one with the lips?_

She tunes most of it out. It's simple enough. Ruthie fits in here. She's not particularly interested in hearing anyone but herself talk, leaving Kate free to make the right noises and do some crowd-scanning of her own till something in Ruthie's tone snags her ear. Grudging respect and the faintest hint of challenge. A warning that's not exactly good natured.

_Settle in, Katie. I hear he's a fighter._

It jars her right back into the moment. Into the tight-laced dress and the air heavy with perfume and insincerity.

_Um... Sorry, Castle?_

It's an idiotic thing to say. Of _course_ Castle. Of _course_ every single person who's laid eyes on the two of them all night assumes she's somehow gotten her middle-class hooks into him. Or that she's just the most recent amusement. She's how the recently divorced playboy's been passing the time lately.

It's the whole damned _plan._ To let everyone assume it's an old familiar dance they're doing, all the while flying below radar to catch a break in the case. It's the plan, but she fucking hates it.

* * *

 

There's something off about him when he drags her on to the dance floor. Something off about them both, but she's inclined to blame him. His hand splays wide over her back, skin meeting skin through the lattice-work of the corset-back dress. She flushes, undone by the realization that he's leading.

Something dark worms its way into her mind. Alarm. An abrupt, unshakable suspicion that she's the only one working here. That _he_ might be working on something else entirely. The tickets. The dress. The dance. he might have been working on _her_ this whole time.

It makes her jagged. Sharp-edged and suddenly stiff in his arms. It brushes off the fact that her read on things doesn't exactly jibe with the fact that he's been spilling information in her ear the whole time. It doesn't jibe with the reality that he's definitely unnerved. Unhappy at best, and downright _angry_ at worst, but this dark thing will have none of it.

_It's her_ job _to know about you._

It's a dismissal. A sharp lash of accusation underneath that makes him blink. It tugs him right out of whatever's going on with him. Unease. Anger. He draws back and blinks at her, confused. And . . . hurt?

The sag of his shoulders almost undoes whatever this is. The loosening of his arms around her. She wants to apologize. She almost does, though she doesn't really know for what. She's just about to, when out of nowhere he bends her backward.

She's disoriented. The too loud, too close room suddenly turns upside down and the dark thing comes out on top. She's rigid with fury. With confusion and the white hot desire to be out of this entire situation. She braces. She's less than a second from dropping him flat in the middle of the dance floor when her mind finally registers the single word he's hissing between his teeth.

_Powell_

She goes limp in the instant between tides. Fury giving way to shame. Powell with Anne Greene on his arm. She staggers after him, embarrassed. Miserably grateful that at least one of them is working.

* * *

 

She doesn't need to do this. She reminds herself of that almost every step of the way. She pats the inside pocket of her jacket obsessively. Looks around at the sketchy array of subway denizens and tells herself it's downright _stupid_ to do this.

But her palm still tingles with the memory of Susan Delgado's locket trickling from her own hand into Joanne's. She owes that to him. Whatever small solace she was able to bring to the woman's daughter—whatever tiny part of her own heart that's healed by the act—she owes him.

And she's sorry, too. Cringingly sorry for that moment on the dance floor, even though he doesn't really know. He can't really know the formless, ugly thing that crept into her mind, but she's sorry anyway, so she does it.

She tries to take it in stride when the doorman nods her right by the desk. Tries not to calculate the magic number of comings and goings that must have put her on some list, literal or figurative. She tries not to wonder who else might be on that list. How many, and how much more right they have to be there than she does. She _tries,_ and by the time she knocks on the door—by the time she's trading air kisses and Martha's ushering her right to the heart of their little family circle—she's not wondering at all.

* * *

 

"I don't know how I'm going to work today." She presses a hand to her midsection as he walks her to the door. She's full and warm and weak with laughter. Fuzzy around the edges from a contented hour sipping coffee and telling tales.

"I didn't think you were _supposed_ to work today, Detective." He nudges her shoulder with his own.

"I'm not!" she shoots back, embarrassed that he's mother-henning her. Flustered when she realizes that he's followed her barefoot from the loft all the way to the elevator. She stabs at the down button. It's more that she needs something than any burning desire to go. "Not _really_ working. I'm just . . . there's just a few . . ."

"I know." He jumps in quickly like he's worried he's offended her. Or maybe it's just the light gliding quickly up the numbers over the elevator. Maybe he's not eager to have her go. "But there's always just a few. And you work too hard."

His mouth twists hard. His cheeks darken and the soft ding of the elevator arriving should be a relief to them both. It isn't though. She twists around as she steps through the doors. Her hand shoots out to hold the door, nearly landing on top of his. They share a laugh, only a little awkward, and the silence it gives way to is more comfortable that it should be.

"I'm sorry," she says. It's impulsive and comes out a little too loud. A little too forceful, but she lurches on. "For not bidding on you."

"Oh, really?"

Her eyes go wide. She didn't mean to say it that. Not at _all_ and she can't even blame him for the smirk that spreads across his face. Shed like to hit him for it, but she can't exactly _blame_ him.

"Not for _me."_ She scowls at him. Only just manages to resist the urge to stick her tongue out. "For you." She closes her eyes and tries to remember what it's like not to sound like an idiot.

"You _should_ be sorry." He plays it up. Takes a mock wounded tone that lets her off the hook. "Do you have any idea what one of those auction dates is like?"

"No?" she says, because how would she.

He looks at her for a long beat before he answer quietly. "Me neither."

He _does_ know. He has his suspicions, anyway, about the dark thing that crept in on the dance floor. Shame wells up in her again, but she pushes it away. She takes a step past it.

"I'll make it up to you," she says, not letting herself think about it. Pressing on in the face of his blank surprise. "When it's over, I'll listen to all the gory details."

"You will?" He frowns like he's turning the words over. Waiting for her to pull the football away at the last second. Flummoxed when she doesn't. "Really?"

"Really." She says it firmly, spending the last little bit of bravery that brought her here this morning. She gives him a little shove. Knocks his shoulder and her own clear of the doors they've been holding open the whole time. "Least I can do."

"Can we have ice cream?" He leans sideways, his face in a frame that's narrowing by the second. "And paint each other's toenails? That's what girls do, right?"

"Like _I_ would know, Castle." She rolls her eyes as the doors bump closed. Whispers it to herself as his laughter follows her down. "Like I would know."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I assume that these will stop falling out of my head at some point. In the meantime, I'm sorry, and thanks for reading/supporting.


	6. Unfathomable—1 x 09 (Little Girl Lost)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's unfortunate. Unfair, too. Probably a bunch of un- things that she can't think of right now, because she keeps thinking about the fact that she wants to talk about it. Will and the kiss and yin-yin the panda that wasn't, and it's not the guy across the table from her she wants to talk about it with."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag for Little Girl Lost (1 x 09)

 

* * *

 

She wants to talk about it.

It's an awkward realization made all the more awkward by the fact that it comes in the middle of her date. Or _"date."_ She's started thinking of it in quote marks along the way, even though the bar's nice enough and he's nice enough. There are definitely quote marks.

It's unfortunate. Unfair, too. Probably a bunch of _un-_ things that she can't think of right now, because she keeps thinking about the fact that she wants to talk about it. Will and the kiss and yin-yin the panda that wasn't, and it's not the guy across the table from her she wants to talk about it with.

_Unfortunate_

_Unfair_

"So . . ." Her date ( _"date"_ ) draws out the syllable. He lifts the bottle he's been nursing. She finished hers a while back, and she's already turned down a second beer, but he swishes the last swallow around in a hopeful sort of way. "It's early yet."

_Unlikely_

"Not for me." The apologetic smile she gives him is real. She'd liked him on the phone. He'd liked her. But their just-the-other-side-of-cordial flirtation in the course of chasing down some evidence from one of her suspect's priors hadn't really translated across the table, and that probably doesn't have much to do with Will or a recently developed desire to _talk._ Probably doesn't. "Long day."

"Long day," he repeats, as if he's poking around inside it for what's true and not true. "Sure. Too bad."

"It is," she says, but she's not exactly agreeing with him. They're not exactly having the same conversation, and it's one more reason not to draw things out.

* * *

 

She wants to talk about it.

The notion still pushes around the inside of her skull when she and her "date" have parted ways, amicably. _Unambiguously,_ or so she hopes, and she's wondering what to do with this. The wholly unfamiliar desire to share or vent or explain. All three at once, maybe.

She assumes it'll wait. Despite his surprisingly good behavior while the case was ongoing, she can't see him letting go of Will that easily. She can't see him letting go of the story, and she figures that he'll tease and coax and cajole it from her, bit by bit.

Or there'll be some inane reason they're stuck together somewhere—stakeout or waiting eternally on some bureaucratic process—and she'll just blurt it out. Because something about him has her . . . unbending a little. Unfolding and running afoul of her own rules about privacy. About what absolutely, non-negotiably stays inside.

Still, satisfaction is written in future tense right up till the moment that she realizes there's a convenience store clerk counting change into her hand and a six pack of beer she doesn't particularly like under one arm. She wanders out the glass doors and turns a half circle, peering up at the cross streets. She's a few streets over from his loft, and it really _is_ early yet.

Apparently she wants to talk about it now.

* * *

 

He answers the door in his pajamas. Not the expected jeans and a sweatshirt or something else one degree off his usual button-down/sport coat look. Actual soft-looking, plaid pajama pants and a well-worn t-shirt.

"Beckett."

"Castle."

He blinks at her, surprised, but not at all displeased. She blinks at him, then down at her watch, totally nonplussed.

"Detective Beckett!" Alexis appears, wrapped in a pink chenille robe. Overstuffed bunny slippers peek out from under the hem of her striped pajama pants. "I thought you had a date?"

"The word 'private' has no meaning to you, does it?"

She glares at him, but he already has his hands up.

"She's a skilled interrogator."

"He never stands a chance," Alexis agrees, looking pleased with herself.

"I'm interrupting," she hears herself say. She's more than a little mortified that it hadn't occurred to her to call. To wonder if he'd even be in. But he's definitely _in_ and he has a family and she can't believe she just showed up.

"You're not!" Alexis tugs at her sleeve, pulling Kate through the doorway. "Right, Dad?"

"Interrupting." He mutters it to himself, but he's looking at her—at the six-pack under her arm—like she might as well be a six-foot rabbit. Alexis kicks his shin, though, and he rouses himself. "No. Not interrupting at all."

* * *

 

"I should have called," she says to his back as he watches Alexis disappear upstairs. "You and Alexis were clearly . . ." She trails off as he turns toward her, looking glum. "I didn't mean to chase her off."

"Chase her off?" He snorts. "She'll probably send you a thank you note." He kicks at the bottom step, scowling down at the floor. "It's possible this case has left me a little too clingy for my not-so-little girl's tastes."

"Ah." The penny drops, and she feels a little sorry for him. More than a little retroactive sympathy when she thinks of some of the stories about his ex's less-than-stellar parenting in the new and unwelcome light of Theresa and Alfred Candela.

"And you?" He wanders to the kitchen counter where he'd set down the beer after Alexis insisted he take her coat. He holds a bottle up to the light, frowning a little at the label.

"Me?" She stands at the foot of the stairs, wondering if he means her to follow. Wondering how a spur-of-the-moment thing like this actually works.

"Case hangover sabotage your . . . date?" The hesitation is slight, the smile underneath just enough to hint at quote marks.

"I _had_ a date, Castle." She crosses the room and snatches the bottle from his hand.

"And yet . . ." he replies evenly as he moves around to the other side of the counter. He roots around in a drawer, coming up with a churchkey. He grabs another bottle and pops the top. "Here you are."

He holds both out to her—the open bottle and the churchkey itself. It's an odd little concession. A cautious message. Her choice, and just as oddly, it disarms her. Settles her on some point she hadn't really realized was in question: Stay or go.

She swaps her bottle for the open one. She waits for him to pop the second cap, then clinks the neck of his. "Here I am."

* * *

 

They're stuck on shop talk for a while. What will happen with Angela and why. How things will move through the court system and how much FBI involvement there'll be.

"It's like the world's worst riddle," he says, grimmer than he'd usually be. "When is a kidnapping not a kidnapping?"

It's not uncomfortable. Beer in his kitchen. Offloading some of the lingering baggage from the case. It's not unpleasant, but it's unsatisfying. Weirdly unnerving the way he's content to follow her lead. The way he's not pushing. About Will or about anything.

But they move from the kitchen to his office at some point. He holds up the four beers still in the carrier. She shrugs a _why not?_ and that's it as far as any kind of discussion goes.

"The Batcave after dark," he jokes, indicating the blankets and pillows piled at the foot of the two oversized leather chairs drawn around for a better angle on the flat screen with a scatter of DVD cases out on the shelf beneath.

"Not quite what I pictured." She drops into the chair closest to the door, fighting the urge to scoot it back a little when he sits and she realizes their knees are practically brushing.

"So you've pictured it."

He gives her an over-the-top leer, but something shifts for her. Something about the light or the warmth of the space. Or maybe just the fact that for once he _isn't_ pushing, and she was kind of counting on him for that. Whatever it is, something shifts.

" _He_ kissed _me._ " She worries the edge of the label on her beer with a thumbnail, passing the time in the eternity before he says anything.

"Ok . . ." He draws the word out. Starts and stops in the process of saying something else, then goes for it. "But when I showed up. You weren't . . . _not_ kissing him." He scrunches his eyes shut, as though he expects to be on the receiving end of violence.

It makes her laugh, though. The ridiculous face he's making. The fact that he's right. "I wasn't _not_ kissing him."

"How did you two . . ." He pulls up short, rethinking the questions as he goes. "I know how you met, but how did you ever . . ." He sets his beer aside and places one hand on each arm of the chair, palms facing each other. He looks from one to the other like the distance between them is infinite.

"Is it that hard to picture?" It comes out a little sharp. A little defensive, but really she's just surprised.

Castle nods, cautious but in earnest. "It kind of is."

"You're the writer." She shifts in her chair, twisting sideways to face him. Settling in. It's strange, looking from the outside in like this, but interesting, too, like he's got the answer to some nagging question she hasn't even asked herself yet. "How would it happen if you were writing it?"

"Well . . ." He glances at her, satisfying himself that she's really asking. "I get the set up." He glances past her, out the door and as far up the stairs as he can see. "Going through something that . . . intense. Something only one other person in the world really gets." His voice is quiet. Matter of fact. "It's profound. I can see it in the moment."

"The moment," she echoes. She feels hollow and strangely distant from her own body.

He registers the odd quality of her voice. She feels it. Another shift in the energy between them. In the blur of her peripheral vision, she sees his hand advance and retreat. She sees him pulled in two directions, and isn't sure herself which way she wants the moment to go.

"Besides, he's a crier, isn't he?" He's so deadly serious as he says it that it tears a laugh from her. A wet, ugly snort that eggs him on. "And we're not talking a single manly tear rolling down the rugged planes of his creepily chiseled face. Full on ugly cry. I can see that turning into a pity fu—"

_"Castle!"_ She scoops a pillow from the floor and fires it at him.

He catches it and hides his face, peering around the side to see if she's really mad. If he pulled the wrong way, and she doesn't really know any more than he does until more of the story slips our in fits and starts.

"We didn't plan it. Neither of us was looking when—" She breaks off, not really wanting to concede that he's more or less on the money about how it started.

"When." He gives her a nod, moving past it. Listening and following her lead.

"But once we were together, it seemed logical." She winces at the word, but there's really no other. "A good fit, everyone said."

"Well if _everyone_ said." He spreads his hands, kidding, but it's a little sour. A little surprised, and it bugs her.

"I'm just saying" — she gestures toward him with her beer — "you're the only one who's ever said they can't see it."

She falls silent. He doesn't jump in, and maybe this is the end of it. His offer to listen. Her desire to talk. She feels clearer. More centered, even with another beer and a half gone, and maybe that's enough. She's just thinking it could be when he breaks the silence.

"He's too sure of you," he says quickly. Quietly. "Like he can just walk in whenever and . . ." He snaps his fingers. "I just can't see anyone being that . . . complacent about you."

"Complacent."

The word rings out like a chime all through her. She remembers the end in more detail than she's allowed herself in years. The fancy meal and the way he held her hand across the table. Everything presented as a _fait accompli,_ with all the upsides to Philadelphia for her as an afterthought. Smaller department. More room for rapid advancement. And no rabbit holes to go chasing down. She remembers his pitch, point by point, and it aches a little, but it's no worse than that.

"He always was," she admits. She tips back another swallow of her beer, but it's warm, and she doesn't much like it anyway.

_It's a good ending_.

She remembers him saying that, right here, and it feels like a cue. She closes her hands around the necks of her empties and his, pushing to her feet as she does. He doesn't protest. He rises, too. He snags the cardboard with its two orphans and follows her from the office back to the kitchen.

"Where should I . . ." She raises the cluster of bottles.

"Just there." He indicates the counter and holds up the unopened leftovers. She makes a face and shakes her head. "We could pour out a 24 on the curb. Where did you two break up?"

She laughs and doesn't answer, and then they're in the foyer. Then he's helping her on with her coat, and she doesn't feel like wrangling over that, so she lets him. He holds the door open for her, and she half wants to leave things like that. A laugh and a high note and some kind of satisfaction. She half wants to, but she turns back to say good night and he's waiting. Leaning on the jamb and holding the door open wide, like she's welcome to change her mind.

"He still is, you know." His voice is quiet, but there's an edge to it. A question, and he holds her gaze when she looks up. "Complacent."

"You were eavesdropping," she says, but there's not much heat behind it.

"Eavesdropping?" He draws his face into an exaggerated blank. " 'Think about it'," he mimics, making his voice absurdly deep. He holds up a hand, heading her off. "He's got that whole barrel-chested thing going on. If _I_ was eavesdropping, the whole _bullpen_ was eavesdropping."

She rolls her eyes, conceding the point. It's another breakpoint. Another possible ending, but her feet are planted, and his seem to be, too.

"I know he is." She's surprised to find an edge to the words. Surprised to find the clean lines of anger buried beneath the mess of everything else. "And I didn't say anything, so he'll think 'That's not a no'."

"And it's not _not_ a no?"

It's a little swift. A little eager, and they're drifting into dangerous waters here. Or they could be, and she's usually more cautious than this. But tonight, she wants to talk.

"It's not _not_ a no," she says, the truth unfurling inside her like something warm and comfortable, but a little heavy, too. Possibility dying an airless death, and it can't help but weigh her down for a while. "He'll think what he wants to think, no matter what I say. I'm not . . . burning any more energy on that."

"Oh you _do,_ don't you?" His face breaks into a grin so wide it makes her blink.

"Do what?" She holds up a hand, cutting off her own question. "Never mind. Never _mind_ , Castle." She turns to hide her own grin. She heads for the elevator and doesn't turn back.

"Definitely a little more Nikki Heat than I thought," he calls after her.

She grins to herself and doesn't turn back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading.


	7. Hearsay—3 x 12 (Poof! You're Dead)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Everything's driving her a little mad lately. The precinct is buzzes like a junior high lunch room, day and night, and for her, it's not a welcome change."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Venturing into S3 here, which might be a mistake

 

 

Everything's driving her a little mad lately. The precinct is buzzes like a junior high lunch room, day and night, and for her, it's not a welcome change.

She's happy for Lanie. Happy for Esposito, though she doesn't like the part of her that worries. The part of her that rises up with threats for him, warnings and grim prophecies for her, like it's any of her business. Like either of them needs her input or anyone else's, for that matter.

She's happy for them, but she wishes they'd just come clean already. Ryan's having a little too much fun torturing his partner. Everyone's having a little too much fun. Not quite catching the two of them _in flagrante._ Dropping not-quite-innocent comments and letting the two of them writhe a while.

Everyone's having _tremendous_ fun, except her. The whole thing makes her careful. Exaggeratedly, awkwardly careful, because she doesn't like knowing things she's not supposed to know. She doesn't like feeling like a snoop when she pointedly, deliberately _isn't_ one.

It's strange, given her profession. That's what people say when it comes up. _If_ it comes up, because she's not exactly a sharer, either. But she doesn't think of it as strange.

Important. That's how she sees it. Do unto others, and lord knows she's fiercely private, but it's more than that. Important in more ways than just that.

She's not a snoop _because_ of her profession. Because it's too easy to lose Kate to Beckett already. Because it's hard to switch her off at night and on her days off. It's hard enough to keep conversation from turning into interrogation. So she doesn't snoop, because she's more than the job. And no one needs reminding of that as much as she does.

 

* * *

She's not expecting things to get worse. She goes on worrying and not liking herself for it. She goes on wishing they'd come clean. Hoping that everyone, for the love of God, will tire of it or something— _anything_ —else will capture the collective imagination.

But then something does, and it's worse. It's complicated, and she wasn't expecting it at all.

She's so definitely not expecting it that she barges right in outside the magic shop. Castle's leaning in, and Esposito's going pale. She thinks it's more of the same. That it's Castle winding the poor guy up, just like everyone has been, and it's stupid early and she's just had enough.

_Everyone knows what?_ she asks with what she hopes is just enough _oomph_ in Castle's direction that he'll take the hint.

_Nothing_.

It's absolute unison, but they might as well be speaking Swedish and Swahili for all the word has in common. Esposito makes an absolutely amateur feint with his two-way and slips off, but she hardly notices.

Castle practically radiates unhappiness. Tension, and it's the last thing in the world she was expecting. It's jarring enough that she's asking before she can think better of it. Before she recalls that it's really none of her business.

_You ok, Castle?_

The pause isn't much. Just a beat, but she fully expects him to rush right in. To call up his ready smile and change the subject, but he's silent. Unhappy, she thinks again, and she can't help herself. She goes on.

_You seem upset._

The last word snags his attention. Or maybe it's that she's asking at all. Maybe he thinks she's annoyed that he's distracted. Either way, it calls up the ready smile. It sets his shoulders further back and lifts his chin.

_No. No, I'm fine. Why?_

_Okay_ , she says, but it isn't. _He_ isn't. And she doesn't like knowing things she's not supposed to know.

* * *

 

It's an unfamiliar feeling. The sudden urge to kill Kevin Ryan. To wrap him up in his tweedy little vest and suffocate him, just to shut him up. It's a new thing, and she wonders if he knows he's taking his life in his hands, waving that damned paper around. That _damned_ page six that makes the scene in front of the magic shop all too clear. Clearer than it's meant to be.

Castle hasn't said a word. He has to know. He has to have seen Ryan and the other six, eight, ten people passing it from hand to hand. He has to have seen the off-putting photoshop job. His own scowl and Gina's crudely snipped and set on the faded gray of the page.

She thinks he _must_ know, then thinks he doesn't know at all. Back-and-forth, she goes, and why? It's none of her business. Whatever's behind his unhappy silence. Whatever has him so turned inward that might well _not_ know that it's in the paper. That _he's_ the source of the current lunchroom buzz.

It's none of her business, but it tests her resolve like nothing before. Not about snooping, exactly, but asking. Pressing the issue like he would, because it bothers him when she's upset. It bothers _her_ when _he_ is, and that really shouldn't be a revelation. It isn't. That's another _not exactly,_ but this is different.

Because it's not just a stupid fight about Taylor Swift tickets, and it's not just a couple of warmed over inches of gossip column. He's upset, and she doesn't like it. She tries teasing him out of it. Lifting his phone and holding it up with a flourish. She feels a flush of pride when he laughs. A flush of something else entirely when when he flirts.

_You had your hand in my pocket and I didn't even feel it? Do it again._

But the phone rings. It's Gina, and he shuts down instantly. His face is stone as he takes the phone from her. He jams his thumb on the button, leaving a thick, heavy silence between them.

_What?_ he says, and she doesn't know—genuinely doesn't know—if he wants her to answer. If he's waiting for it, and he's so unhappy, she almost doesn't care if he wants to talk about it or not. If she's supposed to know or not supposed to know. She almost doesn't care, because he's upset and she doesn't like it.

Except she does like it, and that's what stops her mouth in the end. He's dodging his ex-wife-slash-girlfriend-slash-publisher's calls. And there's a dark, fucked up little part of her that's thrilled.

* * *

 

She's tugged this way and that, caught in the middle with Ryan pressing Esposito about his buddy, Ray the magic show lover. A smile zings all around the bullpen at that one. Even Castle catches a sliver of it. But she's the wall it slams into. She's caught in the middle and had enough and they're off after Tobias Strange.

It's a relief. The two of them away from the lunchroom drama machine, at least, and he seems glad enough that _she_ doesn't want to talk about the business with the phone or the paper or anything. He's not fishing or looking at he sidelong, trying to figure what she knows or doesn't know, and it's an absolute relief for an hour or two.

He's off on the retribution angle. He's absolutely enthralled by the possibility of espionage in the illusion business, and he's a new man, spinning off into uncharted territory. He chatters on and on as they crawl through traffic. She rolls her eyes and pokes holes in every last scenario, and it might not be wishful thinking that he's as grateful to be out of the thick of it as she is. She watches him out of the corner of her eye and it seems true. They spill out of the car and he's still going. He's on to a counter-spy in a sequined bathing suit.

"I'm telling you. Getting Chuck booted was a dry run. Ooh! What if he needed the C4 to plant it?" He hurries after her as she shakes her head. "What if he suspected them both — "

"Both?" She turns as she stabs the button for the elevator down to the morgue. "Two magician spies now?"

"Strange's rival _and_ his assistant." He brushes off her skepticism entirely. " _She_ was the more dangerous one. They always are, you know."

He gives her an up-and-down look that's silly at first, but turns inside out somewhere along the way. It sends a shiver chasing over her skin. It shouldn't, but it does, and he knows it does. He's surprised, but he _knows._

He lets it hover in the air for a beat. It's too close in the elevator, and she'd almost rather see him upset. Almost.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. It calls them both back to who they're supposed to be. Out of a different corner of the lunchroom entirely. His breath hitches just enough that she notices. Just enough that he might mean her to, and he goes on.

"Zalman had orders to neutralize her, but the magician was a minor player. So shine a light on him and _boom!_ He's effectively out of the game."He thinks about it. Grins to himself. "Literally _boom!"_

She overplays the scowl. Exaggerates to keep them here in this familiar back-and-forth. To keep them well clear of anything that isn't and can't be, but it's no good. It's pointless.

They push through the doors and Lanie is there in a knockout dress, radiating impatience. Radiating everything that isn't and can't be. She's throwing off sparks, and it's catching.

Kate feels it in her chest and belly and the tips of her fingers. That fizzing newness and the dark, rich underneath of it all, because it's not new at all. It's inevitable. A slow burn that has nothing to do with any lunchroom buzz, and she's dumbstruck.

There's a brutal back and forth between them. Castle and Lanie, and she finds herself too off center from the elevator to head it off. Too up-ended by recent epiphanies and the reality that this goes far beyond what she's supposed to know and not. What she wants to know and not. She's too off center, and the back and forth between they two people in the world she's closest to is nothing like the worst of it.

_. . . who's the lucky victim?_

_. . . you tell me what's going on between you and Gina . . ._

And there it is. Everything she does and doesn't want to know.

* * *

 

She can't shake it after that. Her stomach's inclined to drop. The part of her that's supposed to be in charge drones a warning in the background, but she can't shake that fizzing, electric feeling.

She feels guilty for a dozen reasons. Because of Josh. Because whatever's going on with him and Gina, it shouldn't have anything to do with her. It _can't_ have anything to do with her.

But she can't shake it. That sense that she's firing on all cylinders. That _he_ is, and they are, and it's not just contagious. It's not just Lanie and Esposito. It's not even that some dark little part of her still _aches_ every time she thinks about him arm-and-arm with Gina last spring.

There's something new and holding-her-breath about it all, and she doesn't know whether to thank God or curse fate that the solve comes in an out-of-the-way room. That it's not the two of them—inches apart and giving off sparks—right in the middle of the bullpen.

She can't shake it, but she can't own it, either. What it means when he looks at her like that. What it means that she _wants_ him to look at her like that when she has no right to. No right at all.

But he does look at her like that. He _is_ looking at her, and however out of the way the room is, all she can think about it is the lunchroom buzz. Is the sea of knowing smiles and the money changing hands.

_What?_

It's so much sharper than she means it to be, and he falters. He loses faith in the moment, and her stomach's inclined to drop, whether it has any right to or not.

_Nothing,_ he says brusquely. Immediately. _So what do we do now?_

She says something, but it's no answer. Something, but it's no answer at all.

* * *

 

She doesn't really know what's different in the end. Why she, of all people, is the one to say they should take the wild shot with Dahl and the mirror and a convenient identical twin. She's not sure why she suddenly believes in all kinds of magic, but it comes down to the three of them. The lunchroom roar dies down. It's just her and Castle and Ryan and she hears herself ask.

_So … where's Esposito?_

_Ha, take a wild guess._

Ryan laughs, and the two of them converge on Lanie's name. They're smiling, though. They're all smiling, and it's as if they all know they'll be the first in on the secret. That it's just a matter of time, not something she's not supposed to know.

She doesn't know what's different, but she's the optimist all of a sudden.

_The bubble'll burst soon enough,_ he says.

_Not if you're in it with the right person,_ the words rise up out of her like long-overdue truth, and she almost reaches for him. With Ryan standing right there, she almost pulls him right around to face her.

She doesn't have to, in the end. He turns, and there's a question in his eyes. Something that shines a light on that dark little corner of her, and it's not about Gina or Demming or the world's worst timing. It's not about _then,_ even when his phone rings. It's about now and the moment after and the moment after that.

He lingers a minute as Ryan walks away with whatever she just signed. He lingers, and it's not hesitation. It's a nothing-up-my-sleeve look he gives her. One that's leaves no doubt in her mind what he means.

_Excuse me, I need to take this._

* * *

 

It's still hard to overhear. Hard to kill off the old habit, and it does stop her in her tracks.

_No. No, what I'm saying is . . . it's over._

Shes hot and cold together at the pain in his voice. The frustration and desolate undertone she thinks knows. The sense of fracture and the sting of raw places, newly exposed.

It might be what keeps her there. Empathy out of step. It might be what slows her movements to something as deliberate as his own just a few minutes ago. It might be what makes her linger to see the moment through, though it isn't easy.

He's the one to bring up Josh, and it isn't easy. It feels like a shot. A dig, and she's inclined to flare up. To let it be an excuse to go. To leave him to feel however it is he feels about his ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, still publisher.

But he came back. He could just as easily have slipped out, but he didn't, and she wonders if it's a challenge.

_Doctor motorcycle boy?_

She thinks maybe it _is_ a challenge. That maybe it's his way of saying y _our move._

Maybe it's a continuation of every conversation they haven't been having, because Kate Beckett doesn't like to know things she's not supposed to know. Or maybe it's everything at once, because it's never going to be easy. Maybe people will always talk, and there's never going to be a moment with more magic than silk flowers up her sleeve.

Maybe. Maybe not, but she doesn't run.

* * *

 

She hustles ahead of him to pay. For her and for him, and for once he doesn't fight her. He nods a quiet thanks and steers them through the crowd winding up to the truck. He finds them a bench, wonder of wonders.

They eat in silence. Comparative silence, because even at his lowest, he can't help commenting on the fact that the little browned bits of cheese are the best and he needs a spoon for the chocolate sludge at the bottom of the cup.

He can't help it, but is heart's not in it. He's upset, and she worries that the performance is for her. That he thinks the usual patter is part of the terms for this. For company in a dimly lit hour, even if it is on a street bench in the cold.

"Do you want one? A spoon," he explains as though she wasn't listening. As though he expects that. He pops up from beside her. He's talking fast, his eyes darting to the empty cardboard dish on lap like the end is coming and he's not eager for it. "Or round two? On me. Only fair, and you didn't even taste the biscuits . . ."

"I'm good," she says quietly. She tips her head to the side as though she'll read him better in some other light. "You really still hungry?"

He shakes his head, eyes on the sidewalk. "Wasn't really . . ."

He looks up, startled and worried. She wonders why. If it's about tipping his hand or maybe he thinks she'll be mad or think he's a sad case for just wanting the company. She wonders, but it isn't important. It really just isn't. She pats the bench next to her, and he sits.

Silence falls again, easier now. More complete, and it's tempting to leave it like this. To spend time watching New York crawl by until the cold gets the better of them. But it's her move, even if that's . . . problematic. Even if she doesn't know what it means. It's her move.

"If you want . . ." Her voice is loud, sudden enough that she feels him startle. She feels him turn toward her, and she can't look. It's strange and foreign and awkward enough that she can't look. "I know you said you were glad no one asked . . ."

"Not no one," he says, and there's a sharp, angry edge to the words. One he has to work to soften. "You." He hesitates. He's not having any easier a time with this than she is. "I know it seems like privacy isn't a big thing with me. But it's not easy to have your . . . mistakes looking up at you from every flat surface." His mouth twists in a smile that's just this side of humorless as he adds, "And being the talk of the water cooler? Not as cool as it sounds."

"No, it's not."

There's enough feeling in the reply that it draws him around. He gives her a curious look and it almost comes tumbling out. The truth about Demming and the whole damned summer and . . . something like everything. It almost comes tumbling out, but it doesn't feel like the time. She picks up the thread of what she meant to say, instead. The offer she meant in earnest, however awkward it is to make.

"No water cooler here, though." She nudges his shoulder with hers. It's a little too buddy buddy, but she pushes through it. Through the embarrassment and certainty that she's just not _good_ at this. "So . . . you doing ok, Castle?"

He's surprised. Bordering on shocked, and it's not doing wonders for the embarrassment, but he answers. A question with a question, but an answer still. "You really want to know?"

"I do." She nods. Sets aside her empty tray and tucks her scarf tighter around her throat. She folds her hands in her lap. A not-going-anywhere gesture that draws a smile up out of him. "Whatever you want to tell me, I want to know."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Not sure this conceit works this late in the game. Thanks for reading, though.


	8. Unmasked—2 x 06 (Vampire Weekend)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's the crack of dawn when he asks her. Before the crack of dawn, and she thinks she must've misheard, because it's still September. It's 60 degrees already, even with the sun just a possibility in the east, and there's exactly nothing in the air that would put any sane person in mind of Halloween."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Touches on "When the Bough Breaks" (2 x 05), but it's mostly Vampire Weekend

 

"What are you doing for Halloween?"

It's the crack of dawn when he asks her. Before the crack of dawn, and she thinks she must've misheard, because it's still September. It's 60 degrees already, even with the sun just a possibility in the east, and there's exactly nothing in the air that would put any sane person in mind of Halloween.

But he's not a sane person. He's a weirdly timid wreck now. Lately. Since he's been back. A weirdly timid wreck who's talking at her a mile a minute, even though they're on their way to a body, and she's hardly even sipped her coffee.

". . . so say you don't know." He stumbles over an uneven patch of ground as he half turns, waiting for her answer.

"I don't know?" She's asking, not complying, but it's better than good enough for him.

"Great!" he says. He smiles just as the first streaks of pink make their appearance in the sky. "Then you'll come!"

"I'll come?" She doesn't want to ask—doesn't want to talk at all until she absolutely has to—because it's _early._ "Wait. Castle. Where?"

"My Halloween party." He gives her an exaggerated _duh_ look. "I mean you'll get an invitation. They're cool. Will be cool. They're always cool, and this year—" His mouth clamps shut suddenly. He gives her a narrow-eyed look that's almost a relief. Almost normal, but it evaporates. It gives way to something timid. "But you'll come?"

She's awake enough by then to see he's kicking himself for letting it come out as a question. For accidentally backpedaling, and she thinks about leaping on it. Torturing him with something noncommittal.

But he's stumbling all over himself to get her to say she'll come to a party that's _weeks_ from now, and it's sweet. It's something close to normal for them, and she wants that. She wants things not to be raw and tentative and two seconds from implosion, the way they have been since he's been back. He apologized. She accepted. And she loves Halloween and she misses things being easy between them.

"I'll come." She holds up a hand, short-circuiting yet another outburst. "If you shut up and let me drink my coffee, I'll come."

* * *

 

The invitations are cool. Heavy, stone-grey card stock that opens to a pop-up outline of Nosferatu, delicately cut from some kind of exquisite black-lacquered paper. The details are embossed on the card stock itself. Spidery, sprawling script that bumps up and down as it crosses the page in a jagged line.

There's a handwritten message on hers. Red ink that leaps out at her: _You said you'd come._

It makes her laugh to think of him agonizing over it. Weighing the relative merits of saying nothing at all against the desire to be sure of her. It makes her smile to herself. She anchors the corners with bottles of half-dry nail polish so it'll stand open, peering up at her night and day from the top of her dresser.

_You said you'd come._

It makes her smile every time.

* * *

 

Too many things happen, all in a row.

The book party. She'd known about it, of course. Known she'd have to make an appearance, and she'd even splurged on the dress. On the necklace and the silly, flashy cocktail ring she'd let the clerk at the boutique talk her into.

Of course she'd _known_ about it. She just hadn't _thought_ about it any kind of head-on way until now. Until flashes explode, blinding her, and she's terrified and pissed off and he's _leaving._ After betraying her and owning up and worming his way back into her life. After the dedication and page 105 and the fucking nerve of him. The fucking state of oblivion he calls home.

_What man has ever turned you away?_

It's too many things all at once, and she hardly remembers anything of the stupid party after that. She grabs a beer even though she'd rather have wine, but _he's_ drinking wine, and she's just that childish at the moment. The Captain pries her from the corner now and again. She brings her teeth together in a smile for the benefit of someone or other. A whole string of someone or others, and in between, Ryan and Esposito dance around her oh-so-carefully, trying to coax her out of silence.

She hardly remembers any of it, though. Hardly anything between that stupid fight and the flash of that godawful cocktail ring as she sweeps the top of the dresser clean. As she sends the invitation, clinking bottles and all, sailing over the side into the trash.

* * *

 

She specializes in not caring after that. That he's going with nothing more than a firm handshake, then not going at all. About the end of Nikki Heat and her sudden resurrection. About the party. The _other_ party, because what's the point?

It's bad timing. Specializing in apathy just when everyone's talking about it. Lanie teases Esposito, tight-lipped, but not exactly about her costume. Esposito gives Ryan grief about Jenny.

_Other plans, bro? She hanging out with_ her _imaginary friends?_

The bullpen buzzes. The morgue and every square inch behind the yellow tape at every single crime scene, because he's invited everyone in Manhattan, apparently, and every last at one of them is beside themselves with excitement. Everyone's talking about it, and not one of them cares that she doesn't care at all.

* * *

 

It's worse with him than anyone. They're back where they were weeks ago. The book party—that stupid fight and everything—has managed to set them back that far. They're two seconds from implosion, and he knows it. He seems to think another party's just the thing to fix it.

He's clumsy with hints. Loud when he brings it up with anyone and everyone. When he leans into the fact that it's his _famous, annual_ _Halloween party,_ and shoots her a sidelong look. And then he shows up at the cemetery in costume. With just a few days to go, he actually does. _What_ costume, she has no idea, and he's waiting for her to ask. She _knows_ he's waiting, and she'd rather not give him the satisfaction, but she can't quite stop herself. She positively does not care, and still she asks.

_Are you wearing suspenders?_

He takes the opening, and makes his own after that. He drops one broad hint after another. Weirdly timid and crashing forward all the same. He looks at her sidelong like he's wondering how they're back to this. Two seconds from implosion again, and she wants to blurt everything out. That she can't believe he was going to leave. Can't believe how much the prospect of it hurt, when she _should've_ been relieved. She wants to yell in his face that he's stupid and ask if he even likes her or what?

But somehow she opens her mouth and the words come out cool and controlled and not at all like she was just on the verge of metaphorically passing him a checkbox note on the way to home room.

_Who says I'm even coming to your party?_

His face falls. She turns on her heel but not soon enough. She sees it out of the corner of her eye as her palm comes down on the bell a little harder than necessary. She sees the sag of his shoulders and the hurt in the lines around his eyes.

_You did. You said you'd come._

He doesn't say it out loud. He doesn't say anything, but it's not as though he has to.

_You said you'd come._

* * *

 

The news that she's not going to show makes the rounds in a flurry that dies down almost as soon as it starts. As soon as everyone remembers that Beckett doesn't _do_ parties, and then it's back to the way it's been. It's back to talk of costumes and one-upping each other with truly gross ideas for appetizers. The only difference is the way people talk right past her. The way their eyes skip over her, because she's not going to show, and they all figured anyway.

It should be a relief. Comparative peace and quiet. The luxury of not having to repeat herself a dozen times.

It's been a relief her whole working life. Boundaries she'd learned to set hard way back in the academy. Professionalism. That's what she's called it since she made Detective, and it's served her well.

_Beckett never shows._

She hears it in passing. A not-entirely-familiar voice that's absolutely confident. Absolutely sure, and there's no reason it shouldn't be. There's no reason at all it should bother her, but she's brittle when Esposito asks where her shadow is. When he asks if she's going, like he doesn't know full well.

She's brittle and stupidly upset, and when she opens her mouth to answer, she can't just leave it at a no.

_I don't know. He throws a lot of parties._

Espo stops in his tracks. He gives her a look that says he's weighing the options. That he might actually ask something. If she's ok. If she and Castle are ok, and she's so entirely not up for that. She rushes into the breach.

_You?_

He gives her another look. A minute shake of his head that's a mix of pity and frustration.

_Are you kidding? I'm all over that._

He's going, then, and it feels stupidly like some kind of last chance. A final thread of connection about to snap, and she remembers what it was like to smile at Nosferatu and the handwritten message in eager red ink.

_What are you gonna wear?_

She misses nonchalant by a lot. They both know it, but Esposito takes pity on her. He plays it up.

_You wanna know? You gotta show. To see what_ I _got goin' on._

* * *

 

It's the stupid egg that decides her. It's not the stupid egg at all.

It's the fact that he takes it seriously, and that he's on his feet instantly when Alexis needs him. It's the way he thanks her for watching Feggin, and the skies between them clear in a moment that's silly and serious and _thank you_ and _I'm sorry_ all tumbled together.

_You took care of Feggin._

_Yeah, well, he was easy. He didn't even fuss when I put him to bed._

It's all of that, and something not nearly so nice.

He plays her. She wants to know. _Really_ wants to know how he came to this. What in Crow's story speaks to him. She wants to know that she's not just some curiosity, and he _plays_ her. He strings together something on the fly. A lie, and she buys it absolutely. It's an object lesson. A shocking sting when he smirks.

_It's what I_ do.

But it _isn't_ with her. It hasn't been and needn't be, and for the first time it strikes her that this—whatever it is they have, and whatever it is they are to one another—is hers to lose. That it was never just him going, but her giving him every indication that she wanted him to go. That she couldn't be rid of him soon enough, with nothing more than a firm handshake.

_Beckett never shows._

She hears the echo of it in her head. Sees Lanie throwing up her hands and Esposito shaking his head. She lifts her eyes and he's looking at her straight on. Not a timid wreck any more, but hers to lose, whatever he is to her.

_Party's at nine o'clock. I cannot_ wait _to see what you're wearing._

It's the challenge. The demand. That's what decides her.

* * *

 

It's not as easy as just showing. Of course it isn't.

Her little prank breaks the ice, but it freezes over again soon enough. She freezes over, as every last person she knows—a few she swears she's never seen in her life—comes up to gawp. To tell her they never, ever thought she'd show.

She works her way out of the same conversation over and over, and it's awkward. There's no place she comes to rest. Lanie and Espo are flirting in a dark corner, and Ryan's drunk is just a little too on the happy side. A little too loud, and she can't quite find anywhere she fits.

She's thinking of leaving every ten seconds. Determined to stay every other ten. She nurses her drink and fidgets with her glass and laughs along at jokes she can't hear. She scans the crowd for him. Finds him here, then there, and tries not to be obvious, but the fact is she doesn't need to try.

He's here, then there. Laughing along or nodding seriously. He's refilling goblets and swapping out trays. He's being a good host, and it's devastating in a backward kind of way. It reddens her cheeks when she realizes that she's set herself up a second time. The book party and this one. Somewhere, out of the corner of her eye, she'd seen the whole evening playing out entirely differently.

It's devastating, then strangely easier. Their eyes meet from the far ends of the room and he smiles. She sees his conversation skip a beat, and it's enough for the moment. It's something close to just right.

She roams the place. Snoops a little under cover of the crush of bodies. She nurses her drink and chats idly. She samples green olive eyeballs and cheese straws painted like witches' fingers. She sings along to the music under her breath and marvels at the elaborate decorations. The delicately carved pumpkin, and it makes her wonder about the simple innocence of it running right into a situation that could easily have gone so badly for Alexis.

She roams, quietly enjoying herself until she's back near the kitchen, and all of a sudden he's there. All of a sudden, he has her cornered. How, she's not exactly sure. The crowd's thinned a little, but the place is still wall-to-wall people. Everywhere but here, somehow. Here it's just the two of them, and she's not at all sure how that happened.

She's not at all sure how she feels about it. How he does. He scratches at the line of glue at his temple. The silly wig is more than a little worse for wear and he looks . . . frazzled. Ill at ease, maybe, or gun shy from the last time.

"Now, Detective, aren't you glad you came?"

The words are broad and teasing, like they still have an audience. Like they're picking up the moment after her little stunt. But they don't. They aren't, and it's the wrong tack to take. He knows it, and she knows it. She's bristling and panicked. Devastated, but he raises a palm in apology and drops the smug grin.

"I am," he says quietly. "I'm really glad you came." The corner of his mouth curves up in the hint of a smile, but this one's mostly sincere. "Even if you did scare the hell out of me."

"Don't I always scare the hell out you, Castle?" She arches an eyebrow, grateful for what seems like the familiar rhythm of their patter.

It seems like that, then it doesn't.

"You do, Kate." His voice is low. Abruptly raw and honest. "You really do scare the hell out of me."

"Good. Good to know," she blurts and means it.

She smiles at him. Too bright and too unguarded, but he smiles back, and that's good, too.

It's good to know.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There really should have been a Halloween smooch, but Brain!Poneh is no fun. Thanks for reading.


	9. Liminal—3 x 22 (To Love and Die in LA)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's not alcohol or distance. It's not grief or loss or war stories that need telling. None of those things explains this moment."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Wrote this a long time ago for something else. To Love and Die in LA. AU Insert.

 

 

It's not the alcohol, though they've both drunk more than they usually would. She has, certainly. Scotch on top of the bottle of white they'd killed with dinner—room service he'd quietly ordered, and she hadn't made a fuss. But it's not alcohol that tips her head to the side and has him venturing more than he has in a long time.

It's not that they're far from home, though he thanks the strange angels that wherever this goes or doesn't go, it won't be Ryan or Esposito poking their heads around the corner to bring things to a screeching halt.

He's not at all sure a screeching halt is on the horizon when she looks at him like that. When they're this close and neither of them seems to be going anywhere.

It's not alcohol or distance. It's not grief or loss or war stories that need telling. None of those things explains this moment.

Any one of them might explain it away, though. Tomorrow, any one of them might be the matter-of-fact apology on her lips. He knows too well how easy it is to explain things away, so long as they're not particular about the truth. They haven't been particular in a while now.

These are the things that fix him in place when she opens her eyes wide and takes herself in hand. When she tries to get clear of it—history and energy and possibility—and she doesn't quite manage it, even though she's going.

These are the things that hold him still as they say their lines out of order.

_I should go. It's late. Good night._

_Kate._

_Good night, Castle._

These are the things that stop his mouth. The things that propel her through the door.

But they don't end it.

He means to go to his room. She pulls the door to, and that's that. He means to go, but somehow he follows. He traces her footsteps, and his knuckles brush the ugly metallic surface. Not really a knock. It doesn't qualify.

It's absurd in too many ways to count. He raises his fist again, hell bent this time, but something stays his hand.

"Kate." He sinks to the floor, back against the other door, legs stretched out in front of him. In this for the long haul before he even knows he'll speak. "I know you're there."

She is. Just the other side of the door. Gone and not gone. She'd probably say he hears her. That his voice would carry if it weren't for her back against the door. Or that it's her breath. That he's listening for once in his life and he hears her breath.

She'd probably connect the dots. Some sensible explanation, but really, he just knows.

"I know you're there," he says again. "And I guess . . . I guess you don't want to talk?"

It's a kind of working truth. Too familiar when it comes to them. She _does_ want to talk. She let herself just now. A few halting sentences. A few memories, and it was a little easier. Shadows clearing just for a moment. She _wants_ to talk. She just won't.

"I do." He winces. Amends it quickly and hopes it not too late. "I'd like to."

He holds his breath, suspended in the almost silence, but she's there. She's still there, and he's at a loss. Not for words. Never that when it comes to her. For where to start when there's so much he wants to say.

"I'm sorry." That's first when he thinks about the face she turned to hide. "I'm so sorry about Royce."

There's something then. Movement on the far side of the door and his heart drops. He feels heavy, like he'll sink and sink and draw the earth in with him. She's going. He's sure she must be going until he closes his eyes and the sound makes sense. He pictures her, back to the doorframe, making herself small. Sliding to the floor.

"I can't imagine." He presses his palm to the door. "When you asked . . . if it were you . . . I can't imagine."

That's a lie, though. He _can_ imagine, all too well. He has. Blood blooming bright across her chest, no matter that it wasn't hers. A gun trained on her and his vision going black and red as he fell on Lockwood. He lies awake imagining.

"We always think there's time." His fingers fall away from the door. He turns his palms up on his thighs. Flexes his hand against the twinge that's still there. "Even doing what we do. We think tomorrow is a given . . ."

He stops. There's too much pushing from the inside. Too much of himself and them mixed up in this, and he wants her to be ok. First and foremost, he wants that.

"I'm sorry you didn't have that. That you didn't get a chance to make peace."

He plants his hands on the floor. He should go, but there's movement just then. The sound of metal on metal and the door swinging open. Just a crack, then wider. She's sitting sideways with her knees drawn up. Her bare toes are close enough to touch as her fingers fall from the door handle to knot around her shins.

She lifts her cheek from her thigh and looks at him, straight on. She's crying. It's the second time. Only the second time he's ever seen her cry, and words do fail him now.

"I don't want to go to sleep," she says. Adamant, as though he's told her to. Her gaze falters, then. Her forehead drops to her knees. "I don't want to be alone."

The words are muffled. Almost lost, but she turns her cheek to face him and he doesn't think she meant them to be.

"You're not, Kate." He reaches out. Hesitates, then makes himself be brave for once. He tugs at the knot of her fingers. Wraps her hand in both of his. "You're not alone."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Stupid to put this up just when I'm taking everything down, but whatever. I wanted to give it a life, however brief.


	10. Amends—2 x 02 (The Double Down)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forgiveness doesn't come easily to her. Maybe it never did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter of this from out of nowhere. Posted only here, not at FF.net.

Forgiveness doesn't come easily to her. Maybe it never did. She’s been thinking a lot lately about the silences in her life. She’s always thought of that as something chosen. That she’s quality over quantity when it comes to her inner circle. But, since he’s been back—since she’s been thinking about forgiveness—ghosts crowd the edges of her mind now. Friends she's fallen out with. Relationships that ended in sharp, definite terms. 

She thinks about the Herculean effort of forgiving her father. Accepting his efforts to make amends, anyway, and she wonders if it was never a simple matter. She wonders if she’s unyielding by nature, or is it one more legacy of that January night?

Either way, it doesn’t come easily now. It's a process, not a moment. An act of will unfolding over time, and she knows that. Logically, she knows, and even so, it's hard enough that she wonders if it ever did. 

Part of the problem—the struggle—is the act of looking back. For her, memory has long felt like a luxury. Something other people enjoy that’s a minefield for her. She navigates it carefully.Narrowly. A smiling picture of her parents on the lid of a jewelry box. A ring on a department store chain. Touchstones of untainted happiness. Touchstones outside her experience. From before there were three, and she's never stopped to examine that. To wonder if it's to keep her own moments untarnished or something more fractured. If she ranks herself low in some hierarchy of mourning. 

Whatever the case, it's more than the danger of memory that makes forgiveness a battle. 

It's the danger of wanting. Needing, really, but her heart and mind have long since elided the difference. Glossed over the fact that she was a child, a girl, a woman, who was lucky enough to love her mother wholeheartedly. To be loved wholeheartedly. A need that her life's work has revealed goes all too often unfulfilled, and still she thinks in terms of wanting. In terms of luxury and dependence, and it's hard to see the sense in forgiving someone . . . optional. 

And what is Richard Castle if not optional at best?

She shies away from the question when it occurs to her. He's too much already. Everything about him is too much. 

It's a shock to have him back. To feel breath reaching parts of her it hasn't in weeks—in months—and it's such a relief, even though she's furious with him. It's a shock how badly it still hurts. When he's nipping at her heels, asking what he did that was so wrong. When he fucking tries to shrink her right there at her desk, just when she'd started to let her guard down. It's a shock to hear stone cold truth in her own words. Her own voice, though it sounds strange and distant. 

_You dredged up my past for you, Castle. Not for me. And you're too selfish to even see it._

It's a shock to feel something inside her straining toward him when he comes back that same night, humbled and sincere. Holding his heart in his hands, even though he doesn't think she'll forgive him in a million years.

But for all that—for all the _work_ of it—she does forgive him. She wants to. 

She's just not sure she's up to the task. 

 

* * *

 

She's grateful for the full moon. Grateful that things are a little madcap, two homicides notwithstanding, and grateful that he's being weird. Run-of-the mill annoying in the way she has to admit she doesn't actually mind, but there's something layered over that. 

He's distracted by . . . something. Frequent somethings that pull him away from her, but not too far, and it's a relief. There's some ugliness to the realization. That she wants him there. That she's not over missing him—hell, that she's admitting even to herself that she missed him in the first place—but forgiveness is a work in progress, and she's not quite up to being attached at the hip. 

She's unhappy about that. Unhappy with herself. She's not the push-and-pull type. She prides herself on fair-mindedness, and if she's not the most open person, she's up front. She's not in the business of mixed messages and game playing. 

She usually isn't, but she's not sure what else to call this. Relief that he's up to something that keeps him on hand and at a distance. That there's an opportunity around every corner to frown and scold and throw up her hands, but she doesn't have to do without him. 

She's unhappy with herself and wonders how many things she prides herself on are just another word for unforgiving. 

 

* * *

 

It takes her longer to work it out than it should. That they're _betting_ on the two cases. Everyone’s betting. She goes from unhappy with herself to furious with him to complicit in the whole damned thing in seconds. It's dizzying. Or it would be if there were any time at all for self-examination. 

There isn't, though. Alibis and autopsy findings roll in. Everything contradicts everything else, and all of a sudden they're working the same case—all of them—and she's knocked flat by yet another epiphany. 

She misses it: Him and her against the world. Looking just barely over her own shoulder, she realizes it’s an opportunity lost. That the two of had been working their way toward being an _us_ again, however slowly, and now it's the four of them. Now there's scrutiny and furrowed brows from Ryan and Esposito, and it radiates out from there. Now, around every corner she turns, she finds knowing looks and silences that fall too suddenly.

Will she forgive him? Won't she? 

They’re all watching and wondering, and it has her out of sorts. It sours her temper, the idea that every soul in their little world is watching them. The sneaking suspicion that money very well might be changing hands over that, too, and it’s no one’s fucking business but hers.

Except it’s his business, too.

There’s no one moment that drives that particular point home. No one eager look or tentative gesture. No a sudden straightening of his spine, though she reads all of that and more in him, because he’s not _just_ sorry. He’s frustrated. He’s angry, too, sometimes, and he won’t wear the hair shirt forever. 

She doesn’t want him to, truly. She wants them to be past this, but it doesn’t help that everyone’s looking on now. Everyone’s rooting for him. Or rooting against him. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter which way any given person wants it to go. 

He’s back. He’s at the board and on the edge of her desk. He’s in his usual chair and striding beside her to and from the elevator, but she hasn’t _taken_ him back, and it’s obvious to everyone. 

They’re in limbo. She hasn't done the work of forgiving him, and they won't be an _us_ —whatever that has meant or does or will mean—until she does.

 

* * *

 

She opens the file that night. Finds the key in the fourth cubby she tries and slots it into the file drawer lock. She twists it with a vengeance and pulls out the still-sealed envelope. She opens it. 

She doesn't know what it has to do with anything. Not at first. Not for a while. 

Her vision swims and sips of air are all she can manage. She's pressed into the corner of her couch, clutching her mother's ring tight enough to draw blood, as it turns out, but the pain doesn't register as her eyes scan the few pieces of paper inside. 

_Subsequent wounds . . ._

_. . . deliberate_

_Designed to suggest a random attack . . ._

It feels like prophecy, then.

_We don't believe it was random anymore._

She hears her own voice, calm and measured. She sees herself from the outside. Professional. Maybe even empathetic from the casual observer's point of view. But in her own ears—ringing back and forth inside her skull—it sounds cold. Brutally cold, because this _hurts._ What she thought was a fixed point in her history, utterly upended, and it's agonizing. 

She reads the report, beginning to end. Once. Twice. Fifty times before she falls, exhausted,into a dreamless sleep. 

She leaves the file out when she wakes, too few hours later. On the kitchen table, the ottoman. She moves it from place to place and settles on the desk, finally. She neatens the edges of thesheets inside, but leaves it out, sprawling and horizontal, even though she still doesn't know what it has to do with anything. 

She's drawn to the precinct, even though the sky is still too pale for early. She’s drawn to the busy twin boards that she hasn't been studying long when the elevator dings. Her spine straightens. She turns, knowing for a certainty that it's him. 

He makes her laugh. _Crash_ and Kevin Bacon with some silly domestic scene tucked into the middle of it all. It makes her laugh, though, and the next second she knows what the file has to do with anything. Laughing quietly in the weak, early morning light she knows how to do this. How to start anyway. 

_Are you okay?_ he asks gently. 

_Yeah,_ she says, knowing it for a lie. She lets it slide for the moment, though. She sees something like a clear path. Sees that she's taken the first, stumbling step already, so she moves on. _It's just, this one reminds me of my mom's case . . ._

 

* * *

 

It calls for a celebration. The solve and the hard-won confession that definitely requires  their combined efforts. The four of them and two by two. It calls for alcohol and trash talking and a ridiculously complicated breakdown of the bar tab as they argue back and forth about who owes what to whom. 

They stay later than they should, given that it all starts over again in the morning. Later than they should given how thin the two cases have stretched them over the last few days. 

She doesn’t mind. She laughs as hard as any of them. She plants her elbows on the table and her chin is heavy in her hands. She catches him watching her out of the corner of her eye and she welcomes it. A conversation they’re bound to have. That she feels ready to start out here on the weary edge of exhaustion. 

They roll out on to the street some long _eventually_ later. They grumble at Castle for picking up the check in the end, even though no one actually minds much. 

The group breaks up naturally at the corner. Ryan and Esposito hang left, calling quiet insults over their shoulders. The two of them continue straight on. There’s not a lot of concrete left that they have in common. Another block at most, and he’s dragging his feet. 

“What, Castle?” she asks finally.

He blinks at her, a little startled that she _has_ asked, and well he might be. She hasn’t exactly been in the habit lately, but he’s eager to take the win. 

“I have something for you.” He says it quickly, then backpedals. Dials it down a little. “I mean . . . if you’re not, like, on the verge of collapse. It can wait if . . .” 

“I’m not.” She smiles at him, masking a twinge of sadness. It’s another absurdity when she thinks about it. The fact that she wishes he hadn’t checked himself. That she misses the full force of his fussy, nosy, aggravating, _exuberant_ approach to life. “Not on the verge of collapse.” 

“Good.” He bumps her shoulder with his own, turning away too late to hide how his face lights up. “Come on.” 

 

* * *

 

She’s not sure what she’d been picturing. She’d been trying hard _not_ to picture anything. To just follow the moment, but if she _had_ pictured anything, sneaking into his loft wouldn’t have made the internal slideshow. 

“Castle . . .” 

It’s an urgent whisper from near the door. There's soft light coming from one or two spots around the edges of the room. It looks different and not different as _really late_ creeps up on _really early._ It's an almost unbearably intimate thought. That she knows his home well enough to feel  the day-to-night difference curling around her. 

She's suddenly not sure about any of this, but he’s already clear across the big, open space. He’s already half disappeared into a cabinet in the heart of the kitchen, and she can't do anything but follow. 

"Castle, what —"

"Sit." He pops up and sets something on the counter. He steers her to one of the tall stools on the living room side. He has her coat off, and she’s comfortably installed before she knows what's happening. "Hope you like at least one of these flavors." He's setting things out, two by two. Squat round containers and taller cartons. Two more, and those are heftier, rectangular things. "Chocolate. Vanilla. Good base layer." He travels between freezer and counter once more, frowning before he sets down his final load. "Eww. Not these." He catches her look. "Fruit sorbet," he says by way of explanation as he carries them back.

"I like sorbet." It's not so much a protest as a bewildered dive back into the conversation. He's a little manic. A little nervous, and it's contagious. 

"Sorbet is fine." He makes a face that says he really doesn't think so. "But not . . ." There's a dramatic pause. He turns, kicking the freezer shut behind him. "With these." He produces two boxes with a flourish. One green, one orange. Both immediately familiar. "These require full-fat goodness."

"Are those . . ." Her voice is a little unsteady. It's a surprise. It calls up laughter she has to work to hush, but something else, too. It's touching. Stupidly touching. "Castle. Those are Thin Mints."

"And Tagalongs." The words come on a rush of breath, as if he's been holding it. As if he's been worried how this might go. "Those are the only kinds that really freeze right. Samoas do ok, but . . ."

"Fake coconut." She wrinkles her nose.

He laughs. "Agreed. But some people are swayed by the caramel."

They fall quiet, smiling across the counter not quite at each other. Not quite making eye contact until they _are_ making eye contact and the moment is full. It's just nudging its way toward uncomfortable when she shakes herself. She jumps back in. 

"Girl Scout cookies in fall." She runs a reverent finger along the name. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Well, you seem to be quite the aficionado." He gestures at the crowd of things between them. Cartons and absurdly fancy crystal pedestal dishes waiting to be filled. He tries to make light of it, then changes his mind. "And I wanted to apologize."

"For the bet?"She reaches for a dish. For the silver scoop and one of the tiny cartons. Something with a dark satin ribbon of chocolate. She busies her hands and doesn't like herself very much for what they both know is a deflection. "Ryan and Esposito could stand to learn a little humility."

"The bet," he echoes.It's not quite agreement. He ducks his head forward. She can't see much of his face in the low light, but she feels the weight of his gaze. The way he's peering up at her. "And for . . . "He shakes his head. He swallows hard and goes on. "For the file.I started . . . right after you told me." That costs him. His jaw twitches, but he pushes on. “It was all dead ends. For a couple of weeks it was just all nothing. And then when I thought I might have something, you said we'd be through if . . .” 

His breath hitches. He’s upset. _Profoundly_ upset. Her stomach churns with something that’s not as simple as guilt. There’s anger, too. Frustration with how hot it still burns. She wants them to be past this. She does, and all of it ties her tongue. All of it ties her tongue, but for the moment at least, he seems to have more than enough to say for two. 

“I didn't want us to be through."He almost risks a glance at that. Almost, and her heart trips a little faster. She's not sure what he'd see. What she wants to let him see and what she doesn’t. He goes on before she can decide. "When Clark walked me through it . . ." A sharp sound startles them both. The spoon he's been worrying between his fingers clatters to the hard surface of the counter and their eyes lock. "I thought I had to tell you. That no matter what I’d done . . .shouldn’t have done . . . you had a right to know.” He presses his lips together, mulling over something beyond words. "But maybe that was for me, too. And I'm sorry . . ."

"I didn't look," she blunders into the conversation. He quiets immediately and she almost wishes she hadn't. Her eyes drift downward. She drags a fingertip through condensation pooling around the base of a carton and so doesn't feel up to it. "Last night. I didn't open it till last night."

"Why . . . ?" He stops and restarts, _tentative_ and _eager_ at war in his voice. Gentleness winning out. "What changed?"

“Not looking. It was childish,” she says and realizes that she means it in more ways than one. That it had been some kind of test of herself. Of some nonsensical metric. But that’s not all it was either. ”It was . . . to spite you." 

“And you don’t . . .” He frowns like he’d rather shut himself up, but he can’t quite manage it. “You don’t want to spite me any more?” 

“Not always.” She gives him a sharp look. A scowl that’s really a smile, and he’s glad of it. Relieved, but it’s not enough for her suddenly. She wants to bring them to a better place, so she does. She speaks. “I meant it, Castle. Knowing why matters. It's hard," she tells him, though the word is imperfect. "I'm so angry at myself for not seeing it. Not asking the right questions. I wasted . . . all that time."

“Kate you can't . . .” He's indignant, almost sputtering with it. "You were a kid."

"I was a cop," she cuts in. The words have the jagged edges of every unbending impulse she's trying to move away from. She bites the inside of her cheek so she doesn't get lost in it. All that fury. "I'm angry," she says again. "I'm gonna have to be angry for a while. But not at you. Not for _this._ " She flicks a a brief, sharp grin at him, the softens. Waits for him to listen. "But knowing matters. And you don't have to be sorry about the file."

"I don't?" He asks the first time. Declares it on the second try and there's a feeling of ease between them. Lightness even though it's late going on early. "Well . . ." Both his hands snake across the counter. He snatches the boxes of cookies toward himself. "In that case, I guess I can put these away."

She seizes the heavy ice cream scoop with its wicked little beak. She brandishes it. 

"Try it, Castle," she taunts. "Just try it."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long time ago, I wrote about 1000 words of a chapter of Material Witness where Castle stockpiles Girl Scout Cookies after Beckett says so forcefully that they're sold in February, but I could never make it work. 
> 
> Also, there's a podcast called We Got This with Mark and Hal (two of my favorite performers in the world, whom I first knew of via the late, lamented Thrilling Adventure Hour, which Nathan FIllion did a number of episodes of). In one of their episodes they exhaustively discuss the best Girl Scout Cookie. There you have it.


	11. Purlieu—1 x 02 (Nanny McDead)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Her thumb hovers above accept, but the pulse of ten digits at the top her screen arrests her attention. Ten digits. Not Precinct. Not Esposito, or Ryan, or Dad. Ten unfortunately familiar digits.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode tag for Nanny McDead (1 x 02)

 

She's well into her nightly ritual when the phone rings. Hair tugged up, cheeks dotted with bubbles from the drugstore facial cleanser she found at the back of her medicine cabinet. She's out of the usual stuff. She has been for a week or more, but she's not swimming in spare time during retail hours lately.

"Because the phone keeps ringing," she says aloud as she dips her face to meet the bracing cold of the tap water cupped in her hands. She swipes at her eyes with the end of an already-damp towel and gropes along the edge of the vanity.  

_Beckett._

Her own name is on her tongue. Her thumb hovers above _accept,_ but the pulse of ten digits at the top her screen arrests her attention. Ten digits. Not _Precinct._ Not _Esposito,_ or _Ryan,_ or _Dad._ Ten unfortunately familiar digits. 

 _"Castle?"_ She's tired of hearing her own incredulous voice. Tired of saying his name, especially after tonight.

 _"Beckett?"_ He sounds incredulous, too. _"You . . . You're up,"_ he stammers. _"You_ answered." Not incredulous. Baffled.

"You called," she shoots back, as if one thing answers the other, but it doesn't. He called, and he hasn't before now, really. Not just to call, and she's annoyed with him. _Especially_ annoyed with him after the laundry room stunt. After his smug, all's-right-with-the-world read on everything. But the remarkable thing—the legitimately baffling thing—is that she answered. And she's not at all sure why.

 _"I called,"_ he says, and it sounds like an admission of guilt. It sounds contrite. _"I just figured you'd already be . . . Oh."_ She hears the brush of skin and carefully well-past-end-of-day stubble against the speaker, like he's shifting. Uncomfortable. _"Oh. You . . . uh . . . you can't just turn your phone off at night, can you? Stupid."_

The last word is nearly inaudible. It wasn't meant for her ears. Naturally, she latches on. "Hoping for voice mail, Castle?"

She catches sight of her own reflection as she swings the medicine cabinet closed and finds that she's smiling. Rolling her eyes, but smiling, because she's knocked him off his game. Just the fact of her—Kate Beckett, not Detective Beckett—has him muttering in self-recrimination, and it's . . . kind of satisfying. It's kind of fun, because it's not this easy, usually. _He's_ not this easy.

 _"A little, maybe?"_ He doesn't sound suave. He sounds the opposite of suave. That's not new. He misses suave by a long shot, most of the time. But he's not even _trying_ for suave, and that's . . . interesting. Plus, it's late. And he called. That's new. All of that's new, and she's curious, in spite of herself. 

"I could hang up." It's a little bit mean, feeding him more rope, but she can't help it. "Try again, Castle. I promise not to answer." 

 _"No, don't,"_ he says swiftly. Decisively enough that it's gratifying, though she doesn't know why that should be, any more than she knows why she answered. _"Please. Don't hang up."_

She doesn't. She hadn't meant to, she realizes suddenly, and she wonders what that's about. Fun or not, she's annoyed, isn't she? And she certainly doesn't need to be wasting her off-the-clock hours on him. She wouldn't wasting her _on-the-clock_ hours if she had any say in the matter. But she doesn't hang up. Worse than that, she picks it up. The slender thread of a tentative, unexpected conversation.

"I can," she hears herself say. "Turn my phone off, I mean. If I'm not on call." He's silent on the other end. Holding his breath, almost, though she can't say exactly how she knows that. "I'm not tonight," she finishes. Shuts her mouth tight before she's telling him that on call or no, she _doesn't_ turn it off. That in very nearly ten years, she hasn't been able to bring herself to take it of the hook or even flip the ringer to silent. 

She shuts her mouth tight, because why would she even _think_ of telling him that? Why would she even think of telling him anything? She's still pondering this and other mysteries of the deep when his voice interrupts.

 _"So."_ He begins slowly. Uncertainly, when she's just feeling more literally at home. She moves from tile to hardwood to the deep pile of her bedroom rug. _"I didn't wake you? I must be keeping you up, though  . . ."_

"You called, Castle," she repeats bluntly. She's not exactly frustrated with herself. Not any more, anyway, and still, she's kind of taking it out on him. Whatever _it_ is, the dynamic isn't as delicious as she's sure it should be. As it has been.

 _"I wanted to apologize,"_ he blurts, almost overlapping, like he's eager to keep ahead of the dial tone he's sure is coming. It's end-over-end words, but they run out quickly. They come to an abrupt stop. 

"Because . . . ?" She stops, too. She's surprised. Genuinely surprised, even though she's got half a dozen suggestions for things he could definitely be sorry for. 

 _Because he couldn't just stay in the damned hallway . ._.

_Because he'd taken such a stupid risk . . ._

_Because he'd nearly made an awful situation worse  . . ._

Because _she_ had faltered in her play, and she'd very much like for that to be on him. She'd very much like to say that the math had gotten that much more complicated with a civilian to consider, but that's a lie. 

Because he's not just any civilian. 

Because even before she'd heard the chunk of the heavy laundry-room door, she'd been all too aware of him, and she'd stumbled over the confession—the slender connection with Chloe Richardson—that had ultimately made the difference. She'd stumbled, all too aware of his presence, whether he was right there or in the damned hallway as ordered. She'd been painfully aware going in, because he _sees_ too much, whatever diversionary tactics she might employ.  He _hears_ too much and _knows_ too damned much, already.

Except he doesn't know a thing, does he? Not about her. She counts on that. Depends on it. 

 _"Because of what I said."_ His voice startles her out of her sudden reverie for a second time. The words sound like an answer to a question she hasn't asked out loud. A question she'd _never_ ask, because why would she? But he goes on like he knows exactly why she would. He knows she has already. _"Sisterhood,"_ he says, and the word has miserable sarcastic quote marks around it. _"The whole sisterhood thing. I meant it as a compliment."_

"Compliment." She snorts. She slams the bedroom door.  Her temper blazes bright again, and she's grateful for it. Gives vent to familiar irritation and savors it. A more-than-welcome alternative to this . . . uncomfortable need to know. To sort it out between them. "Needs work," she snaps, but she's acting more than a little. Her thumb twitches toward the disconnect button and hesitates. She waits on what comes next, though she couldn't say why. 

 _"I know. Beckett. That's what I'm saying."_ There's a pause. She hears him shift again, and when the words come, it sounds like he has a bad taste in his mouth.  They're sharp enough that she pulls the phone from her ear as though it's warm. As though his own flare of anger can send heat down the line. He settles himself, in the end. She hears the effort and  finds that she can picture it. The way his jaw works and his fingers flex, whether there's pen and paper at hand or not. _"In my world . . . I'm used to . . . "_ He stops. Starts. Stops again, then rushes on like this admission, of all things, is particularly painful. _"I'm used to people who turn that kind of thing on and off."_  

She has a riposte. Something ready made and cutting about how hard it must be to be famous. She has something locked and loaded about his mother the actress, even though she had _liked_ the woman. She'd liked all the dry melodrama, and its stark, fond contrast to his daughter. 

She'd liked his family, and still she has a dozen things she might have said ten minutes ago. She might have said before the phone rang, but now he sounds pained and awkward and strangely sincere. It dries up the last of her annoyance, somehow. She sinks to the edge of the bed with the phone still to her ear. She swings her legs on to the mattress. She falls back to the pile of pillows, and he waits until she's settled. He knows where her body is in time and space—where the two of them are in this conversation and every moment that comes after—and he waits. 

 _"None of this is like I thought it would be,"_ he says quietly. _"It's . . . kids. The two of them. They were both just kids, and it's . . . work."_ His voice doesn't break. He gets the word out before that, but he clears his throat. He's a long time about it, and that's good. _"It's compassion, and I didn't . . . "_

"Too many cop shows?" She laughs. It's low and comfortable enough that she almost thinks better of it. She almost tries to recover, then doesn't. She lets it be what it is. 

_"Maybe a few."_

He doesn't quite laugh, but he's grateful. He's relieved that she's letting him off the hook, and she's relieved, too. Strangely relieved, and then interested. There's a fire in him when he speaks again that  has her eyes closing as she pictures the creaking, bowed shelves in the other room. 

 _"It's good, though,"_ he says, and she hears footsteps coming quickly. Rapid steps and a turn. The clack of things he must be handling, then setting down again. She wonders fleetingly what his home is like. The space he makes for himself. _"I like that it's not all . . . sad commercial strip shredders and fire escapes and morons with the safety on."_

"Oh, been there, done that, have we?" She pictures him with his chin held high, the barrel of gun—safety or no—pressed to the temple of a citizen in her charge, and anger breaks the surface again. Frustration as her world swings back in a familiar direction. 

He disarms her, though. He moves past that bit of history without any particular nostalgia. _"It's work._ Hard _work."_ He leans into the words, and she's at a loss. He is, too. Or maybe he's not at all. Maybe he's letting the silence work between them in a way that's already familiar. And the instant before the moment grows too long, he speaks again. " _It's harder for_ me." 

There's a bit of an eye roll on his end. It makes her snort. Makes her turn her face to the pillow and not care much that she's half a second too late for him not to have heard. 

"You'll get there, Castle." She opens her eyes wide and smiles hard up at the ceiling. She's pleasantly tired.

 _"Oh, I'm_ there _, Detective."_ It's smug. But just smug enough. _"I've got my victim now._ " 

 _Victim._ The single word shuts her smile down. It stiffens her body and sobers her. "The nanny. You're going to kill the nanny." 

 _"The_ nanny?" There's percussion of some kind. One hard surface meeting another as he sets something down or sets it to rights. _"Feh. The nanny_ ," he repeats, like it's the most ridiculous thing in the world. _"The cheating husband_." 

There's force behind the words. A hardness that tells here there's a story there, though not one she'll hear tonight. It's not one she needs to hear tonight and she doesn't examine the question of if. Of _when_. She declines to examine much of anything.

"Which one?" she asks. She makes a half-hearted attempt to dial down the eagerness. Half-hearted at best, and she loves it when he laughs. When he jumps right in. 

 _"Both of them,"_ he says, and he sounds just as delighted. _"All of them."_

"All of them," she agrees. She shivers, practically picturing the words in black and white. The feel of the spine and the rough edges of two-hundred fifty pages she hasn't already read a dozen times. Two-hundred fifty pages for her. About her. With her. "All of them is good."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is stupid push and push back. But whatever. I wrote it. 


	12. Unspoken—3 x 02 (He's Dead, She's Dead)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the stupidest idea she's ever had, coming here. The stupidest. And it's such a strange occasion to spend a superlative on. A name she's only heard in passing. A man she's never met, and a connection to him that's . . . tenuous at best. Only recently re-established and fragile. So fragile, and this is definitely the stupidest idea she's ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An episode tag for "He Said, She Said" (3 x 02) that I've had hanging around for a long time.

It's cool in the long shadow of the old stone church. Cooler than it should be, but the shiver that runs through her has nothing to do with that. Nothing at all to do with shade or the fact that it's still morning. 

It's the stupidest idea she's ever had, coming here. The _stupidest._ And it's such a strange occasion to spend a superlative on. A name she's only heard in passing. A man she's never met, and a connection to him that's . . . tenuous at best. Only recently re-established and fragile. _So_ fragile, and this is definitely the stupidest idea she's ever had. 

Or maybe calling in the first place was. That's how she landed here. Fighting down every overwhelming feeling of awkwardness and picking up the phone. 

Martha had been gracious, of course. Truly devastated. Still funny in the thick of it. Fully attuned to the black humor of it all, and truly gracious. 

_You'll come, won't you, dear? To the service?_

She hadn't promised. She'd murmured the usual polite things about work. About getting away if she could. About keeping Martha in her thoughts. Keeping Chet's family in her thoughts, though she'd stumbled over the name in a moment of blind, blank panic. 

She'd told herself it was a formality anyway. That Martha surely wouldn't expect her.

And yet she'd come, the waver in Martha's voice driving her on. The memory of her matter-of-fact embrace in Kate's own moment of grief and the deft way she'd shepherded Alexis upstairs. 

_Hang in there, kiddo_

_Upstairs if you need us_

Stupid or not, she'd come. 

* * *

She installs herself as far back in the church as seems polite, given how empty it is so far. Given her degree of remove from the proceedings. She's early, though. Awkwardly so, and she can't quite evade the guest book. Can't quite bring herself to move back to more appropriate environs as the church fills, even though she's taken care to keep to the end of the pew. 

_Work,_ she tells herself. She can't be sure a body won't drop. Can't be sure she won't have to slip out, but  it's nerves, pure and simple, really. It's second thoughts and third thoughts and fifteenth thoughts,  and just when she's breaking—just when she's wondering what she has on her person that might serve to razor that damned page out of the guest book and erase any trace of evidence she was ever here—light fingers land on her shoulder. 

Martha pulls her out of the pew and into her arms. An effusive gesture, typical of her and not. She lingers, hands trembling against Kate's shoulder blades. She pulls back, and Kate sees the strain around her eyes, all the more heart wrenching for the extra care she's obviously taken with her make-up.

She squeezes Martha's fingers. Notes somewhere in the back of her mind the sombre black onyx on one hand. Simple gold on the other, and nothing more than a watch and understated pearls on each wrist. She nods a wordless _of course_ when Martha offers a quiet _thank you._

For as long as she can, she keeps all her attention right where it ought to be, but he's there. Broad shoulders and a hand at his mother's elbow. A dark, well-cut suit, and when she looks over Martha's shoulder—when the pull of his gaze is too strong—a small, grateful smile just barely curving his lips.  A  little too much surprise underneath for it not to hurt.

"Mother," he says softly. Regretfully, she thinks, though she shouldn't. "I think they're close to ready."

"Oh." Martha sounds startled. A little bewildered and suddenly older than Kate's used to thinking of her as. Frailer, and that's terrifying, somehow. "Time. It must be time already."

He murmurs a word in Alexis's ear. The girl dips her head in agreement. She offers Kate a sad, considering smile as she takes her grandmother's arm and leads her toward the front of the church. 

He stays. Just for a moment. Not even a moment, but he stays, looking at his shoes. At the gleaming tile floor. At her, though it's out of the corner of his eye. He stays, and then he's going. Without a word, she thinks, but he stops himself. 

"Thank you." His voice is rough. "Thank you for being here, Beckett," he says quickly, and once again, he's going. 

He steps as swiftly as is proper, given the setting. He falls in with them. He skims a light hand down the length of Alexis's braid and tips his head to the side to meet Martha's when it falls briefly against his shoulder.

They make a striking picture. Morning-thin, stained-glass light falling on the red-gold of Alexis's hair. Martha's grace in shadow on the far side of him. The breadth of his shoulders and the somber hue of their clothes. The three of them make a striking picture.

 

* * *

 

The service is . . . strange. A Presbyterian affair some kind that's mostly monotone. She remembers why she can't stand these things, not that she'd forgotten. Not that she _could_ forget. 

She turns her attention to people watching, and there's plenty to keep that interesting. The church continues to fill well after the minister starts the proceedings. More old money in one place than Kate's seen since Castle had played Fairy Godmother and weaseled their way into that charity benefit. 

She clamps that thought off. Every thought, from Martha's cool fingers settling the garnets around her neck to the casual way he'd dusted his knuckles over the diamonds of skin left bare by the lace-up back of her gown as they danced. 

She shakes herself, startled to realize how far the service has advanced while her mind's been wandering. They're at the speeches already, and she's unnerved by how much time she must have lost to the kind of reverie she has no business indulging in. She fixes her attention straight ahead. Where it belongs. 

A man takes the podium. He's medium height, but squarely built. Balding on top, and when he lifts his chin, Kate sees the resemblance to the large-format portrait off to the side of the casket. Chet's son. 

She remembers . . .  something. Grumbling from Castle just a few days ago. So few days ago, it all feels unreal. Such a tiny window of possibility, and all the same, she remembers. 

Him, grumbling. _Not exactly in the market for a brother at this late date._  

Her, halting. Taunting, though they're both out of practice.  _What's the matter, Castle? Too old to share?_

He'd scowled at her. All show, though, as if they'd never traded lies. As if Demming and three months and his ex-wife had never happened, then he'd looked away. He'd smiled out the window of her cruiser. 

_He'd smiled . . ._

She shakes herself again, or maybe it's something else that jolts her back into the here and now. Maybe it's the stumbling words from this sturdy, thick-set man whose voice breaks when he least expects it.

_Chet's son,_ she reminds herself sternly. That's who he must be, and it snaps her back into focus in a hurry. 

_Chet's son._  

Her insides twist for him. She thinks of herself at nineteen. Her own silence all through this part of the ordeal, and she sees herself in this stranger. This man whose existence she hardly knew of two days ago. 

She sees herself in the white knuckles gripping the podium and the stoic set of his jaw. She sees herself, and it's . . . not comforting, exactly. That's not the right word, but she feels less alone. She looks around the church—at the wrinkled, upscale faces and the wrong season— and wonders how it is that everything is unfamiliar. Every particular is so different and still so _fundamentally_ the same. The ritual of it, but the loss, too. The specific pain of losing a parent, however different the details. 

She's sorry for this man, whatever his name is. Sorry for the woman who rises up from the front pew when he falters. His sister, Kate thinks. There was a daughter, too, and she wonders about the omission. Wonders fleetingly if Castle might have been in the market for a sister and why. 

She wonders, but the here and now are too compelling. It matters too much to her when the woman takes his arm and sobs once against his shoulder. It matters too much to the part of her that empathizes when the two of them go on together. Tearfully, laughingly, with each one picking up where the other left off. They go on together. 

For Kate, the strangeness of it falls away. She feels a part of it.  An utterly unexpected sensation. 

She's glad she came. 

 

* * *

Martha is the last to mount the podium. Castle rises to hand her out of the pew, and she casts one longing glance at the back of the church, as if she'd like to run. He dips his head to kiss her cheek, but Kate sees the grim twist of Martha's lips into something that's not quite a smile and knows the move must have been a pretext. 

_Because you're tall. Now go in there and do your job_. 

The sudden memory catches Kate off guard. She has to bow her head. Has to stare hard down at her own tightly knotted hands where they rest in her lap, and even then, enough of a sharp grin breaks through that the heavily powdered older woman on her right sniffs and shifts further away. 

Martha’s voice is clear from the first syllable. It’s powerful, filling the cavernous space of the church effortlessly, and still, it's somehow quiet. She has all the draw of gifted, powerful performer, but there's a rawness to her voice. Kate knows it too well, the ragged edge of genuine grief.  

The eulogy itself—the speech—is . . . well, it’s wonderful. Warm and funny. Nostalgia perfectly punctuated by the present. By all-important glimpses of how well and truly _alive_ Chet had been right up to the very end, and that _matters_. It matters so much, in retrospect. It _explains_ things she's only just realized she doesn't understand. Things she's never understood, and she wishes there had been someone to speak like this for her mother. She wishes  _she'd_ been able to. That she were able to, even now, but this is his gift, channeled through Martha. 

Kate hears him in it. Castle. Not just in the meticulously chosen words, but the shape of it. She hears the empathy and depth of feeling that caught her off guard for too long. For the long two years she took him at face value because it was easier that way. Less terrifying, or so it seemed, right up to the moment she watched him walk away. 

She _hears_ him, and there's a guilty kind of pleasure in listening like this. It has her leaning forward, white knuckled, on the hard, wooden pew. A not-entirely-comfortable sense of her own story weaving in and out of every word, and still she's eager for the next phrase and the next. 

She's fascinated by the moments she knows he must have struggled with. By the flourishes every now and again that must be Martha, and she wonders what _that_ must have been like. If the two of them bickered until sunrise, because that's their way.

She hears him. Sees him, straight-backed and solemn, not so many pews ahead.

She feels like they're closer than ever. Feels a world away from him, halfway back in an old stone church. 

She doesn't know what she feels, but she hears him. 

 

* * *

 

She's not fast enough. The service wraps up quickly, as if there's nothing left to say after Martha, and she finds herself utterly caught out. 

She's on the center aisle and it's instantly filled. Fur wraps and tweed suits and camel-hair coats spill from the pews. They crowd out her view of the back of the church, and the side aisles are no better. 

She trapped. It's an odd sensation. Seething movement that goes nowhere. Hushed conversation, though she feels like she hears every word, every sentiment. Grief and cynicism and boredom raining down. 

She hopelessly turns her shoulders. She torques her hips and tries to slip through gaps that disappear almost before she registers them. She breathes deep. Tries to calm herself, but the truth is, it's like every sensation from the moment she stepped up out of the subway has arrived at once. Like she's thumped back—hard—into her body, and it's overwhelming. 

_Sit_ , she thinks, pivoting in place, though there's hardly room for even that. _Wait it out. Sit._

She manages a step. Another step, though it requires a move that's just the other side of assertive. A sharp word that's well beyond even that. She's almost back to the pew. Almost, when the crush around her opens up. When there's room for her lungs to finally expand and there's quiet. Blessed quiet that doesn't make a bit of sense until she looks up, and there he is. 

_Castle._ There he is.  

"Beckett," he says, and she hears relief in it. She hears gratitude and warmth and an eager kind of hope. She hears a dozen things she shouldn't. A dozen things she has no right to hear. "I thought you were gone." 

"Not gone." She cracks a sideways smile. Lifts her hands as far as she can and lets them fall. "Not for lack of trying."  

He smiles back. He makes himself tall and scowls over the top of the crowd. Draws his elbows in, like he's only just noticed the crush of people seething in place.  

"I can block for you." The smile fades. "If you need to go." 

"I should," she says, but she doesn't mean it.  Even though it's true, she doesn't mean it. "And you . . ." She looks around with no idea where Martha might be in all this. No idea where he really ought to be. "You must have things to do?" 

"I do.  Alexis and I. Mother . . ." 

He gives a guilty start. Casts a glance over one shoulder. She follows his gaze to a dense a knot of people near the front. Imagines Martha—Alexis shy at her side—and feels a pang of guilt. He feels it, too. She sees his shoulders rise and fall. A sigh, and she knows he feels it. 

"I do," he says again. "But can we . . ." His cheeks flush. He corrects himself. "Can I take you for coffee later?" The air goes out of the world between them just for a moment. It eats up all the sound until he rushes in again. "To thank you. For being here. You didn't . . . I know you didn't have to. And I want . . ." He breaks off. Steels himself. "I'd like to." 

She's busy. She will be. She's working and well over her lunch hour already. She couldn't possibly. That's what she should say. A small selection of what she should absolutely say. 

"Coffee." That's what she says instead. What she dumbly repeats before she's stumbling over herself in a voice that sounds like someone else's. "Coffee. Sure. When you're done?" 

"Done," he echoes. 

He looks bereft and hopeful all at once. Glad that she's there, and she aches over it. The ways it's right and the ways it's wrong. She aches at the way it shores them both up, when it really shouldn't. She aches, but the corners of her mouth turn up when he speaks again, determined this time. Resolved. 

"I'll call."  

* * *

 

He doesn't call, in the end. He shows up at the precinct, late in the day, and she was just leaving. He shows up bearing a cardboard tray with two white cups and a wax-paper bakery bag clenched in his other fist. It's a wonder they intersect. She really was just leaving, but here they are, on the verge of revolving past one another in the heavy door to the precinct lobby. 

She spills out on to the street. He follows, juggling the tray and the bag. Hissing as coffee sloshes over the to-go cup's full rim. 

"You're leaving." He shakes the liquid off his skin and looks as if the burn is no more than he deserves. "I was going to call."  

"You were going to call." She nods, hating how eager she sounds. How eager she _is._ "I wasn't sure . . . " She gestures to the street. To the setting sun and long shadows.   

"It's late." He sounds resigned. Disappointed and uncharacteristically subdued as he frowns down at the coffee. "It's late. You won't sleep. Maybe another . . ."

"I'll sleep," she tells him. 

He looks relieved, then not relieved at all, in rapid succession. It smarts. It's bruising, actually, and she thinks of shrugging and going on her way. But he also looks unhappy. He looks worried and in need of a friend, and that's as good label as any for what she means to be. What she'd meant to be by acquiescing to Martha's invitation in the first place. What she means to end the day meaning to be, however ridiculous that piling on of tenses is. 

"It's nice out," she says, making a decision. She takes the bag from him and nods down the street. There's a park. Some green at least and a place to sit. 

He doesn't smile. It's something more than that. It's a rushing out of the tension radiating from him. "Nice," he repeats. 

He rebalances the cardboard tray, and they fall in step. 

* * *

 

Things start out badly. They've frozen over again during the short walk. They're side by side on a bench that seems shorter than it ought to be. It's narrow and tipped back a little, and she feels awkward. He feels awkward. 

"Thank you," he says. It's too formal, and he knows it. He scowls at himself, half laughing at the same time. "Again. Thank you for being there. My mother . . ." 

"She was wonderful." That's too formal, too. And it's odd. The oddest thing in the world to say about a eulogy, but she's not done yet, apparently. "The speech. You did a . . . You _did,_ didn't you?" 

She turns toward him, horrified. The angle is awkward, and his cheeks are red. He's staring at the burn on his hand, and _everything_ is awkward. 

"I . . . shaped," he offers at last, and the conversation dies again. She sips her coffee. He doesn't bother with his. 

She doesn't know what to do with this version of him. She's seen him angry. Seen him unhappy and wary. Sincere and ridiculous. She's seen him frustrated and contrite and wicked and maddening. But she's never seen him . . . subdued. Stiff like this, and preoccupied in a way that's totally unlike him. 

She wonders, out of the blue, where the ex-wife is in all this. _Gina._ Why she wasn't there for Martha, whether they get along or not. Why she isn't there now for him. She's sharply, distantly angry with the woman in way that's novel. Uncomfortable and entirely unfair for all she knows. 

"She loved him." 

It sounds sudden when he says it, but she realizes it might not be. She realizes that she's just as preoccupied as he is, and that's what's strange. To be with him and alone with her thoughts. To be with him and have no idea what he's thinking. It’s beyond strange for the two of them. 

"She did," she says cautiously. "No one who heard her today would doubt it." 

"She does, though."

He says it sharply enough that she cringes, realizing how it might have sounded. Like she’s rating a performance. She almost apologizes, but it's not her, really, that has him bristling. It has something to do with his misery. Something to do with whatever's flattened him like this. 

"She doubts it."  

"Because of the ring?" She's thinking out loud. "Because she was going to say no?"  

"Because . . ." He looks at her directly. It's not just a rearrangement of the body or the lift of his head. It's a frank, dead-on look, and his eyes are clouded over. Troubled. "Because it's complicated," he says, dissatisfied with the word—dissatisfied with the worn-out phrase—before it's even out there between them.  "Love is complicated. Or it's not. It shouldn't be." He grips the take-out cup tight enough that it buckles. Coffee sloshes out all over again, but he hardly seems to notice, intent as he is on getting this out. "Except it is, isn't it?" 

His gaze drops to the untouched coffee again. To the liquid beading on the good wool of his pants, and the still-pink patch of skin on the back of his hand. She thinks about covering with her own, but doesn't. 

"It's work." She surprises herself with the answer. Surprises herself again when the corners of her mouth curve up, and she quickly adds, "I think. The stories don't tell you that, but I hear there's work involved."

"Stupid stories." 

He kicks at the dirt, and she's not sure he's kidding. He would be, usually. It's exactly the kind of thing that would usually have her rolling her eyes. Him pretending to be oblivious. Her feigning exasperation. It's the kind of thing that would usually break the tension and steer them well clear of a serious moment, but it doesn't now. 

"She told me . . . My mother . . ." His voice drops low enough that she has to lean close to follow. "She said whatever mistakes she's made, she raised a good man." 

"And you don't think so?" 

It's not a stall. She doesn't mean it that way, even if it amounts to one. Even if it sounds like something she'd lob across the interrogation table, or a needle she’d use to puncture his ego, she’s genuinely asking. Genuinely wondering what it can have  to do with love and why it’s troubling him like this. 

"I think . . ." 

He looks at her again. He waits. Fills the moment with heavy silence until she meets his eyes. 

"I think that's work, too." He smiles at her, hope and misery washing together. “Figuring out what ‘good’ is." He shakes his head and rushes on like she might say different. "It's hard to know when it's misguided . . . clinging to something that’s run its course. Or when it’s good. When it’s right to work at something, and following—" 

His voice breaks. It drops to something just above a whisper, and he looks away. He looks off into the park. His gaze follows dogs and lovers and kids climbing everything there is to climb. It follows women and men and bicycles. 

"Following your heart," he says with sudden strength. Sudden certainty, like a kite catching the wind, though he doesn't meet her eyes. Not now. "It's hard to know when that's good or just . . . childish." 

Her heart hammers. She feels as sore and raw as the first day of summer. She's sad and wildly angry. With him. With herself and Demming and the ex and the whole damned world. 

_She should have followed her heart . . ._

_I can see the virtue in staying . . ._

It's a conversation they've had but never had. A conversation they're having every second, and all the ways it's unfair come tumbling down on her at once. All the consequences, past, present and future and the myriad ways it hurts. 

"It is." She doesn't know what to say, so she tells the truth. "It's hard to know." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The family conversation they have when Martha is deciding about Chet's proposal always strikes me as one of those frustrating moments. The were often good, especially earlier on, at weaving home issues into the story, but the writers never quite manage to connect this either back to Beckett's crisis of heart at the end of season 2 OR Castle's later in Season 3, even though that tension between loving and being in love—between effortless spark and working on a relationship—is ever present. 
> 
> I'm not happy with how this ends, but I've been working the end to death for months.


	13. Pasticcio—2 x22 (Food to Die For)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's like someone else is running her mouth lately. Someone she doesn't like one bit, who asks things she didn't want to ask. Says things she definitely didn't mean to say. She's not a fan of the unwelcome someone who smiles stupidly when the answer is good and scowls when it's bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter I've been kicking around for a while that's a tag for "Food to Die For" (2 x 22).

_Why risk it?_

The question falls out of her mouth, shocking enough on its own that she doesn't put it together right away. She doesn't realize until they're deep into a conversation she can't imagine having that it's not exactly an isolated incident. 

It's like someone else is running her mouth lately. Someone she doesn't like one bit, who asks things she didn't want to ask. Says things she definitely didn't mean to say. She's not a fan of the unwelcome someone who smiles stupidly when the answer is good and scowls when it's bad. 

_The heart wants what it wants_

He looks right at her as he says it. Entirely too frank. Entirely too main text, and the penny drops hard. 

It's more than her mouth this stranger is running. Whoever it is has  a direct line to her innermost thoughts, and that's dangerous as hell. It has her saying things out loud. Asking things she wants to know, and he listens. He answers, and there she is. This stranger thinking about the good and bad of it, when she shouldn't be thinking about it at all. But she is. She does. 

The problem doesn't end there. It doesn't even end with the inner workings of her head. She catches herself pressing one hand to the thump of her own heart. Slow. Slower, then quick again when she realizes she's been idling. That her pen has been hovering over the same spot on the page for a good long while, and the fingers of her free hand have been tapping out the beat of his pulse. 

She's been thinking about him. About good answers and stupid questions she didn't mean to ask.  She's been thinking about clichés. 

_The heart wants what it wants_

She's not a fan of who- or whatever seems to have taken over her body lately. Her mind. Her heart if she's not careful. She's not a fan at all.

* * *

 

 

She means to say yes when he asks. Demming— _Tom_ —is falling all over himself. He's trying to play it cool, but not really. He likes her. She likes him, and it's nice that it's as simple as that. Nice to have it just be out there for all to see. 

So she means to say yes when he finally works his way around to asking her out. It's practically out of her mouth— _sure, yeah, love to_ —but he brings up Remy's, and she freezes. She's overrun by memory. 

Every one of her senses has something to add. The blue of his eyes, deepened by the shade of his jacket. The warmth of her arm looped through his, and the scent of cologne. The sound of his laugh, loose and weary and middle-of-the-night as she teases him about the spider. And the incomparable taste of french fries stolen from his plate.

She's absolutely overrun, and she leaves him hanging. Demming. Tom, who's done nothing but fall all over himself to catch a date with her, and Remy's makes sense. 

It late. Remy's is close, but it's a date—an outside-the-precinct date—without being anything fancy or high pressure or too much. It makes total sense, and he's a sweet, forthright guy who likes her and makes no secret of it. 

She'd meant to say yes, but here she is, turning him down. 

_Somewhere else you need to be?_

_Yeah . . . How about tomorrow?_

She adds the offer quickly. Before he can read too much into it. Before the refusal says more than she wanted to say, because she likes him. She likes that he likes her, but not _just_ that.

She really does like him.  

* * *

 

It's too stupid to go home. It feels too dishonest, and she really does mean to be better. Kinder  to her past self. She decides to crash Q3. She decides to hijack Maddy's evening, and it's a good idea. 

It's fun. They're over whatever awkward lull there might have been otherwise. Murder as icebreaker. She's never thought of it that way before, and Madison throws her head back when she says it out loud. She laughs, and Kate laughs with her. 

She remembers that she used to be funny. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued. A chip on her shoulder and a supply of biting insults, but she used to be goofy, too. She  used to laugh at dumb things and make other people laugh along with her. 

It's strange to remember that self. To haltingly remember when it's how Maddy still sees her. Not just Rebel Bex, but a girl who laughed easily. Who cried from time to time at sappy movies and would have gladly shivved anyone who dared to advertise that particular fact. A girl whose heart broke a hundred times back when it was readily mended.

It's fun to slip into that version of herself. To lean in as Madison fills her in on the lives of every last person, place, and thing that has anything to do with Stuy. There's no one and nothing she doesn't seem to have kept up with, and it's fun to gasp in all the right places. To pretend she's scandalized by plastic surgeries or really cares about the tawdry details of this affair or that one. 

It's fun to call up her own set of names and places to fill in the gaps. To call her friend out when she goes too far in punching up some shared story. It's fun to outdo her tall tales until they're both pounding the table and wiping away tears of laughter. 

It's fun, but she tires quickly. Not of the company, or even the nostalgia, but it's hardly even going on late before the she's bone tired and sore, as though she's overdone some new exercise regimen. She supposes she has, in a way.   

Maddy surprises her by asking if she can catch a ride home. 

Kate jangles her keys as she pushes back from the corner of the bar they've been holed up in. It's not that she's unwilling—not like she wants out of the evening there and then—but it's a surprise. A nagging kind of surprise that Madison seems to be packing it in early.

"I thought you'd be here until the wee hours or off to some glamorous after party somewhere." 

"Not me." Maddy winces as she works her feet back into the pumps she'd kicked off and tucked beneath the rail to let her bare toes swing free. "Don't want to hover over Jennifer on her first night. In fact, now that my chef search is over, I'm in for some well-deserved down time." 

She seems in earnest, all but dragging her feet on the way to the car. All but collapsing into the passenger seat when they arrive, and the conversation on the short ride is decidedly quiet. She's a far cry from someone too busy to date.

It's a puzzlement to Kate. A mystery that leaves her feeling uneasy. Or at least it leaves the stranger who's had the run of the place lately uneasy. She thinks she'll say something. Decides she definitely won't. Realizes she ought to, and can't think at all how to start, but they're at Maddy's doorstep now.   

"Rick's," Madison announces suddenly. She's holding something up to the dim streetlight. A length of fabric.

Kate's head nearly punches through the roof of the cruiser as her spine straightens.  "Rick. His . . . what?"

"Oh! He must've left it when you hauled me in for questioning." 

Maddy's eyes dance as she says it. Her interrogation adventure is already well on its way to a funny story she'll tell over and over again. 

"Tie," Kate says absently. "Castle's." 

She remembers him tugging it off. Madison in the back of the radio car they'd followed to the precinct. Him in the passenger's seat, angry and not. Frustrated with her, and prying, too. Saying and asking for once, when they really don't do that. 

"You should go out with him if you want to," she blurts. She feels the quick pound of her pulse and a blush creeping up her neck. "You didn't have to tell him you were too busy to go out with him." Her mouth won't shut. It simply won't. "You don't have to . . . not . . . because of me."

Madison is quiet for a long moment. She studies Kate warily, as though there might be more to the outburst. 

"I didn't 'not,' because of you, Bex. Matter of fact . . . " She smiles slyly. Tilts her head, as if she's weighing her options. "I didn't 'not' at all."

"What?" Shows flummoxed. Her gaze darts around as though there's some explanation in the dashboard lights. Out the window. "Then what happened?"

Madison plucks her hand from the wheel. She uncurls the instinctive fist, finger by finger, and lays the tie across the flat of Kate's palm. 

"Ask him," she says as she slides out of the car. "You should definitely ask him."

 

* * *

 

She idles at the curb, tie in hand, for a long time. An absurdly long time, given that it's obvious what she should do. Will definitely do. She'll bring it to the precinct. Give it back to him there. 

Better yet, she'll leave it in the car. God knows he'll be darkening the passenger seat again before long. She'll shove it back in the door pocket. He roots around constantly, so he's sure to find it. No audience there. No significant looks from the fringes of the bullpen. 

It's the logical course of action, clearly defined. Obviously. Definitely. 

So she drives to his loft. 

She curses herself the whole way. Curses whoever's in charge lately, because it sure as hell isn't her. She swears she'll bail at the next intersection. The next one-way that'll take her in the other direction entirely. She swears she’ll run the damned car into a mailbox if that’s what it takes to knock some sense into herself. But she doesn't. 

She drives to his loft, and it only gets worse from there. She parks at his corner. She idles at the curb not at all. She jerks the gearshift to park and flicks off the ignition. She palms her keys and zips off her seatbelt. She slams the driver’s side door and marches right into his damned lobby. 

She waves to the doorman. He calls out to her. _Hello, Ms. Detective._ A joke from when she stayed here. From when she had nothing and he took her in, but she's not thinking about that. 

She's not thinking at all, obviously, because she's in his elevator now. She’s watching the light glide up the numbers, and then she’s striding down his hallway and raising her fist. She's shoving the tie at him the second he opens the door. 

"Beckett." 

He's surprised. He's also strange. Stranger than usual, with goggles pushed up on his head, a spray of hair curving over them like the crest of a wave. He's wearing thick, black rubber gloves that almost reach his elbows, and there's a weather system forming in the kitchen. Actual clouds boiling up from something stainless steel on the counter.

She lets out a laugh. A bark of relief, because she's obviously dreaming. It's obviously all been a dream, because there's no way she'd have done something so entirely _nonsensical_ as drive to his loft when it's coming up on midnight to give him back his damned tie. There's Just. No. Way.

"Beckett." The relief lasts right up to the point that he touches her. Right up till he takes her gingerly by the arm, ignoring the tie entirely, to usher her inside. "Are you ok?" 

Relief gives way to anger. To embarrassed fury. She spins away from him. She holds the tie up again. 

"You _left_ this." She’s in his face enough to make him lift his hands and take half a step back.To make him look like he’s worried about her. Like _she's_ the one dressed up like a mad scientist instead of out on a date like a normal person. It irritates her. "In my car." 

 _That_ irritates _him._ The accusation it became along the way. 

"Not on purpose. It seemed a little formal for the precinct.” He snatches it from her. "But I guess you don't want Demming coming across it." 

“ _Demming?_ What does he have to do with this?" she demands. "He knows there's nothing going on with us." 

"Yeah, he does." He peels off gloves and goggles and dumps them along with the tie on the table just inside the door. “He’s definitely clear on that.” 

There's a sharpness to his retort. A stinging specificity that raises her antennae. Anger makes way for curiosity. For the detective's instinct. 

"Meaning what?" 

Her voice sounds almost calm. Almost reasonable, and it's like a pin a balloon. The tension between them disperses almost as quickly as it built, and they're back to some semblance of themselves. 

"Nothing," he says. Pushback at first, but he reins himself in. ”Meaning nothing." He makes a sheepish gesture toward the tie. "Thanks. You didn't have to"—there's the barest pause. The barest moment when he might say something else, but it passes. “You didn’t have to bring it all the way here." 

He picks up the tie. Something to fiddle with as he doesn't quite look at her. It's all much more like them, suddenly. A not-quite-question she can answer or not. That he might or might not quite ask again, a day, a week, a month from now.

She's relieved. She's grateful to have herself . . . righted again. To be back in charge, body and soul. She's relieved, but it doesn't last. And she has no one but herself to blame. 

"You lied." It's hard to hear from her own mouth. It's hard to believe that it's her and no one else dredging this up when it could be over. When he’s prepared to let it go. "About Madison being too busy. You lied." 

"I did."

They're practically facing off in his hallway. Sizing each other up, and he holds out long enough to surprise them both. Home field advantage, maybe. The thought makes her smile. The insanity of the whole situation. It curves her lips, and her spine softens. She relaxes. He breaks. 

"It's important to me," he's saying all at once. He's studying his toes. Her toes, maybe. He's working it out for himself and wanting her to understand. "Us working together. It's important." His eyes travel up to find hers. "Our relationship." His jaw twitches. He squares his shoulders, as if he thinks she might argue. "I like Madison. But dating a friend of . . .?" 

He makes a gesture between them. An all-encompassing gesture that leaves her unsteady on her feet. Unsteady in herself.  

"I shouldn't have in the first place, you know?"  

"Yeah," she says, and it's true and not true at the same time. It's her saying it and this other person who's been running the show lately. "Yeah, I know." 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried this from another of angles, and I'm not sure this works.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I'm not sure what this is, if anything. At the moment, it might be a couple of loosely linked chapters set early in the series. It's modeled on things others have done, most notably Cora Clavia's "Kiss Me, Castle." If it goes anywhere, I'll post additional chapters in that same fashion.


End file.
